“Human language is in some ways similar to, but in other ways vastly different from, other kinds of animal communication. We simply have no idea about its evolutionary history, though many people have speculated about its possible origins. There is, for instance, the ‘bow-bow’ theory, that language started from attempts to imitate animal sounds. Or the ‘ding-dong’ theory, that it arose from natural sound-producing responses. Or the ‘pooh-pooh’ theory, that it began with violent outcries and exclamations . . . We have no way of knowing whether the kinds of men represented by the earliest fossils could talk or not . . . Language does not leave fossils, at least not until it has become written …” —Man in Nature, by Marston Bates
“But no animal up a tree can initiate a culture.” —“The Simian Basis of Human Mechanics,” in Twilight of Man, by Earnest Albert Hooton
Expressing a human need, I always wanted to write a post that ended with the word Mayonnaise.