According to an old article I found archived today on news.bbc.co.uk, a single mutation in one individual human being could have resulted in the creation of language. This individual is therefore responsible for the explosion of art, culture, science and technology around the world – along with, of course: Thatcherism, hate speech, nagging people, arguments and school. A bit of a mixed blessing really…
What a tremendously strange super-power ‘language’ must have been initially. It must have been particularly strange (and possibly a challenge to the theory) as for at least the first generation it must have been almost useless (of course we don’t know whether or not other human beings required the same mutation to understand language). It makes one wonder about the potentially transformative mutations that might be taking place around us at this very moment – and about the mutations that could have transformed the world but didn’t because of accidents, violence or a lack of serendipity.