The title refers to the word spoor, which is a foot
print, mark, trail, scent, sound, template, sign or dropping
left behind by something that has passed. In general it
is used when tracking wild animals. The dawn of communication
is in short, the development of the meaning of signs; audible,
visible, and durable. There is a distinction between natural
meaning and sign meaning. Natural meaning depends exclusively
on experience. An example would be that heavy clouds indicates
an incoming storm. Sign meaning depends on convention,
arbitrarily agreed upon signals, and simulated action. Sign
meaning, or the communicative act is highly specialized.
Natural meaning includes everything that the phenomenon
implies, and while the roots of sign meaning are found in
natural meaning, it can only correspond to a very small,
singular, unambiguous, easily discernible, memorizable,
and performable part of it. Thus the process of abstraction
emerges.
Of visible signs, which writing and art have become
apart...relatively late in human history ( the past 20,000
years out of 1,000,000) there are again origins and offspring;
actions that are seen as they are performed, and those that
are effective only through some durable, residual trace.
The later is the unique comprehension of humans and developed
into the miracle of language and thought.
Some people think
that language grew out of grunts and imitating found sounds,
but it is far more intricate than that; the evolution of
language, thought, the brain, and culture were interdependent
and reciprocal. Because our brains had the capacity, we
were capable of invention and memory, and when the comprehension
of the sign emerged, we, through a process of play and necessity
invented more signs and systems of signs, and as we did
so, the intensity of our groups and technology increased,
the cavity of our mouths, nasal passages, and larynx expanded
to accomidate the growing number and subtleties of sounds
that our emerging vocabularies demanded, and our brains
grew and became more sophisticated to provide space for
more words, ideas, memory, and stress. The evolution of
language was not linear, but circular.. If any of these
elements did not respond, the linkage of thought, language
and culture would never have occurred.
Language has to do
with sorting things into an intelligible net of concepts
so that we can proceed through chaos and respond not just
instinctively to the present as other animals do but think
about and navigate our reflections about the past, the future,
and the complexities of our feelings. We were able to develop
this process because our brains already had the footprints:
the interwoven firing nets of neurons capable of sorting
images and concepts....... in place.
A final note about
language, one of the fertile areas in which it was developed
was through magic and spirituality. Initially, utterances were considered
supernatural incantations. The inner circle of early bands
and later tribes of humans developed secret utterances that
only the specialized few could understand. Memory developed
because these utterances had to be made in the exact proper
way, or they would not work. Some say this early pattern
of utterance is the root of poetry. But nonetheless, early
language (chants, prayers, family and group survival tactics,
even the mother-child bond) was committed to the record
of memory (making the nets expand) out of the connection
between potential and necessity.
©Sono Osato
