Doodling

 Language is intriguing, listening to a podcast the other night, the American professor was trying to get back to when language started. The answer is of course we will never know, and yet language has developed over the centuries, till we reach the point of now, demanding clear concise text. So how did the many species of human form turn to speech. (that needs explaining)  Was it the animals that trundled past, the need to hunt for food learning to make sounds that became familiar. All we have left is cave paintings, depictions of animals on the walls of caves. Yet they are executed with such care, surely these people from long ago spoke to each other, probably in different languages but they communicated through all the daily intricate housekeeping that kept their lives together.

One of the most marvellous cave artwork is in Chauvet Caves dated 35,000 years ago, and I remember being entranced as we sat and watched Werner Herzog's film - The Cave of Forgotten Dreams at the British Museum, when there was a showing at the Ice Age Exhibition in 2011.  Here on the surface of the cave walls, animals had been painted, even, this I think is marvellous, two animals with multi legs and heads depicting movement.

Our language is mongrel because of the many invasions. We may have had the Romans in BC 43 to AD 410 but our later language is derived from the Old English - Anglo Saxon it then became a bit muddled with the arrival of the latin - 1066 and all that.  It is interesting to note that one of the first written records was made up here at Whitby Abbey by the stock man at the abbey - Caedmon, he wrote a hymn in praise of God.  You can listen to it hear.  

There were four regional types of dialects in Britain and Caedmon would have probably used the Northumbrian.  The language is both rich and strange, listen to the lad, I suspect he comes from a Germanic background.