Light, light transmits information about the environment and we convert it to words, images, ideas in our mind… our organs convert it a format we can use for us before it gets to our brains.
Language was a combination of the nature of light + neural complexity and the right kinds of configurations. I’m sure as science goes forward we’ll be able to decode animals basic language, like “get food”, “go home”, etc, etc.
Some archaeologists theorize that one of the “mystical powers” of an early Homosapien shaman was of accurate drawing. The more accurately they could draw, the more they could eventually -create- the things they drew. So with drawing regarded as an element of survival and power, it progressed with seriousness. By associating different drawings together, it was hoped that the drawings could cause things to happen. So repetitious runes created consistent symbols. I don’t think there really are records of when drawings became semantics. But we probably never would have had the ambition to make a written language if we didn’t at first believe it was magical and could manipulate the forces of nature.
Aesthetics remains a religious hallmark even for that of cave paintings.
Ancient paintings are primitive records of history and to create a record of history one must think themselves as “special” in identity which originates from eccentric religionism.
Or maybe one created a mythic conception of heaven feeling themselves to be special under it thus creating the ideal to transcend the natural into a mythological idealization. ( abided with writing of course to record information as a utility device in creating this dream land.)
What is distinctively “human” is not the capacity for language.
It is the crystallisation of language in writing.
Writing creates a artificial memory whereby humans can enlarge their expirience beyond the limits of one generation or one way of life.
At the same time it has allowed them to invent a world of abstract entities and mistake them for reality.
With writing where men are no longer pointed to a natural world with other animals signs point backwards to the human mouth which then becomes the source of all sense.
One might say that all of our cultural cues and power of infrastructure originated in our absurd beliefs of magic. By being overoptimistic (“god will reward us with rain”) we also became knowledgable. It took the renaissance to fend off the problems with this magic-belief which hurdled us toward the sciences.