[MD] Zen

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Steve]
Which of these two people is the inventer of language?

[Arlo]
The obvious answer is that "language" was the result of collective 
activity of biological individuals. No "one" invented it. It took, at 
the very least, two. Two biological individuals engaged collectively 
(in this case awareness of mutual attention and negotiation of 
symbolic referents). As always it is not "individual versus 
collective" but "individuals engaged collectively".

To posit that one lone individual invented language is akin to asking 
which red blood cell "invented" the human body. The human body is the 
result of the collective activity of many red blood cells (among 
other types of cells), just as language/culture is the result of the 
collective activity of individual biological humans.

In that earliest hypothetical moment, it was a profound "AHA!" moment 
of mutual recognition of awareness, occurring simultaneously for both 
biological individuals, that set of the negotiative process of symbol 
creation that would lead, as the result of thousands of years of 
cultural evolution, to the languages/cultures we see today.