The Royal Spanish Academy of Language defines language as “the faculty of the human being to express himself and communicate with others through articulated sound or other sign systems”, although language is not understood as the medium through which produces a communication, it may not be exclusive to the human being.

Thus, for example, birds use their songs for communication purposes to indicate their availability for mating or their need for food, other animals communicate their position, or the existence of food in the place where they are, or the existence of some nearby danger through screams or screams, in some cases even with a specific intonation. Whales, for example, have a communication system based on infrasound, and dolphins are capable of recognizing each other by their whistle, which is believed to be characteristic of each individual.

However, although the concept of language is usually associated with speech and the use of a language understandable by third parties, language should be defined as the means of establishing communication, by any means that allows it.

In the case of human beings, they do not utter their first words until between 8 and 12 months after their birth, although the truth is that the need to transmit their desires or needs becomes evident from the moment they begin. to breathe.

Now, how, when and what gave rise to the appearance of language in humans?

Determining the exact moment of the appearance of language, understanding that its first expression must have been oral and very limited, is audacity, and a complete barbarity, even more so if we take into account the evolution of the human being. , and the physiological changes that have occurred over thousands of years of evolution.

Now, we currently know that language is related to certain areas of the brain, for example, from the left hemisphere different areas intervene in syntactic construction, and also with the existence of a device that has the necessary characteristics to speak, the vocal cords and the auditory organs, since all oral communication necessarily implies the existence of a listener, who must also be able to understand and interpret the sounds heard.

Studies carried out by different branches of medicine and paleontology have established that hominids that existed about 2 million years ago already had these elements, and understood oral language as a means of transmitting knowledge. , one could speculate that these hominids were already able, through a primitive language, to vocalize the first words and have been the pillar of the evolution of language in humans.

However, understanding language as the medium through which communication is carried out, it is easily understandable that oral communication is not the only form of communication used by human beings, which at some point in history discovered, initially through crude drawings and signs, that writing could also satisfy their communicative needs.

According to the studies carried out and the archaeological evidence obtained, it is believed that the oldest language in the world dates back more than 5,000 years, about 3,500 BC, placing its origin in Mesopotamia, based on archaeological pieces found in the cities located on the margins. of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

At this point in the film, human beings would have already developed oral language as a main means of communication, and even the transmission of knowledge between generations, even allowing them to develop primitive writing that, somehow form, transmit and reproduce oral communication carried out through speech.

From this first written language, of cuneiform signs, in an alphabet made up of about six hundred signs, where more than half were used as ideograms, representing an idea by themselves, the language evolved and was perfected until the Akkadians developed the first Semitic language, predecessor of Arabic and Hebrew. From these primitive languages, the first known alphabet emerged, dating back to 1,300 BC, made up of thirty letters.

From this primitive alphabet it is believed that around 1,300 B.C. Two main alphabets emerged, from which the languages that have reached the present day and that we all know were developed. Thus, from the Phoenician alphabet, Greek and Latin would develop some time later, and from these many current European languages. On the contrary, Hebrew, Arabic, Sanskrit, Tamil and Burmese would be derived from the Aramaic alphabet.

In those years, in other parts of the planet, the language followed its own path, this happened for example in China, whose language is considered one of the oldest in the world, or on the other side of the Atlantic , where vestiges of writing have been found in the Gulf of Mexico, belonging to the Olmec civilization, dating back to 900 BC, long before the hieroglyphic writing of the Mayan culture.

However, in the VIII BC, the Greeks developed, from the Phoenician alphabet, their own alphabet adapted to their language, in which vowels had the same importance as consonants. From this alphabet that was later adopted by the Etruscans, who spread throughout Italy, the Romans based their writing, whose alphabet was initially made up of only 20 letters, to which they incorporated the letters G, Y and Z, which It was later inherited by the Romance and Germanic languages, from which most of the European languages that are currently known and used were born.

In short, the evolution of language has influenced the evolution of human beings throughout this time, facilitating, thanks to the power of communication, their organization, collaboration and understanding, to achieve great technological and social advances.

The capacity of language together with the ability to represent ideas and knowledge on a surface represented a quantitative leap in the evolution of societies, and of knowledge, which could be reliably communicated between generations, without the effort that the solely oral transfer entailed.

In turn, writing facilitated the reproduction of texts, and the expansion of knowledge among the population, which multiplied infinitely with the discovery of the printing press, and represented an evolutionary advance that facilitated the investigation of different subjects. based on the knowledge already acquired and known, promoting the continued evolution and escalation of society to the present day.