A Conjecture on the Origine of Language, with many helps from Friedrich Nietzsche
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18533/journal.v3i3.394Keywords:
Language evolution, Friedrich Nietzsche, Eternal recurrence, overmen and Lake TobaAbstract
It is agreed upon that among all the living things that have existed, only humans can speak. However, we do not know yet since when we have spoken. We find that Nietzsche left distinctive ideas on the origin of language. Reflecting on “eternal recurrence” and “overmen”, the concepts that Nietzsche made popular, we found out that he would agree on dating the origin of language from some 70,000 years ago when the human population shrank drastically to as low as 2,000 in the wake of the super-volcanic eruption at Lake Toba. At that time, the eternal recurrence that had shackled our ancestors for a long time suddenly disappeared and the small band of surviving members could not help becoming overmen or supermen of entire human species. We ascertained the conjecture with the latest development in evolution theory, archaeology and anatomical analysis on human fossils.
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