Origin of Language?

[sublimestatanist]

Hi everyone, I have a question that is likely impossible to answer objectively, but if you have any thoughts I'd be glad to hear them.

So I've been pondering heavily on what constitutes the beginning of human cognition and whether or not it might be language. I know that Mesopotamia holds what we currently know to be the oldest language (Sumerian), whilst English (to my surprise, a Germanic language) is heavily influenced by Latin and Greek.

I'm not intelligent enough to grasp what happened with the destruction of our original people, their vast spiritual/scientific knowledge, etc. Still, it is in this acceptance of not being smart that most people with a shred of reasoning should surmise that we lost vast knowledge due to our oppressive and destructive past which is heavily rooted in Abrahamic religous fanatacism and control.

I don't really get the history though. Mesopotamia fell in 330 BCE to Alexander the Great? Something must've happened in Greece?


Moving to the main question I have, I'm lost as to what came first in our cognition as humans. The bible says something about 'in the beginning there was the word'. Satan says that we were biologically created by him with the intent of us becoming as the Gods.


I keep thinking about how language is highly allegorical and spiritual, not to mention foundational to virtually everything we have today. In terms of math there are influences from linguistics, however I can't determine rationally whether language or math came first; or perhaps if they are one in the same somehow. I find it also fascinating how science is composed heavily of both language and math, much like spirituality is.

Currently the best way we understand the brain is like a computer in that it constantly compares, contrasts and stores information. In this way, perhaps math does come first in that everything is a summation of a binary-like system of sine waves that carry-out the natural actions of cause and effect. This idea would no doubt lead me to discount fate altogether, lest if it were not for the outside influence of our Gods.

At the same time, the part of the brain that deals outside of logic (the subconscious) is our platform for achieving meditation and thus reaching higher planes of consciousness. This I don't think can be defined in a linear fashion due to it's complex, dynamic and ever-changing nature. I feel that language as well merges the logical with the subjective in many ways. Science also has a lot of subjectivity given its analytic nature of comparing things against various factors.

Anyway, thanks for sticking around for my tangent. Also, sorry if my post sounds a little nonsensical. As a Satanist I struggle with a constant weighing of rationalism against things that are unknown, extraordinary and ineffable. This is a part of the path I guess, balancing the masculine and feminine along with the spiritual and physical (as above, so below). It's not easy to moderate these things perfectly all the time, but I do feel it becomes easier through mediation as time progresses.

 

[sublimestatanist]

Update:

I tried to look into the question surrounding the basis of human cognition and it appears that math and language have many similarities in what regions of the brain are affected, namely the posterior parietal cortex (spacial reasoning) and prefrontal cortex (executive functions, decision making) areas. Language however does appear to occur most in the dominant (left) temporal lobe whereas math occurs more equally in both the left and right hemispheres of the brain (according to a study at the University of Maryland).

Considering all that I don't think there really is a reasonable answer as to which form of cognition is more fundamental and which has more influence over one to the other. Some people are great at math and others are great at language arts, yet both things in spite of their apparent differences share a lot in common.

I tend to think of language as this living, changing and dynamic thing while math to me appears cold and rational. It's quite something to know how the thought process that is behind math acts much like that of language. In this way maybe math isn't so black and white as it also too has the ability to shift and change over time.

Anyway, sorry again for such a philosophical and difficult question.

 

[existentialcrisis]

I always wondered about this, too. But I don't think this is something that can be known at our current level. Some things will have to remain a mystery for the forseeable future.

 

[Decio Mure]

According to what High Priestess Maxine wrote, at one time men were all telepathic. Then there was war in the skies. And the tower of Babel collapsed. In a world where everyone is telepathic the phonatory apparatus may still have been developed for the ability to generate psychic energy. Studying Sanskrit alphabet might show how this is possible.

Moving further forward in time. The meter of ancient Greek poetry, from the latest research is emerging how it originated from magical formulas. While it was believed that the meter of magical formulas originated from poetry.

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