[Flo]

I distinctly remember the first time I read of the importance of language in anthropological discovery.

It was at the following site: Dolni Vestonice and the implications in relationship to human evolution just blew me away.

A quote from that site by Tim White, paleoanthrophologist:

After two or three hundred thousand years of nothing new, suddenly, in a tiny segment of time, after this huge gulf of nothing, you've got everything. There's one style over here and another one over there; there's trade, there's art, there's differentiation, all of this stuff just blowing up in your face. So you say to yourself, how come? There's only one thing ...that is big-time enough to render such a huge behavioral shift...it's got to be language.

[TKEman]

Yep, it's true. Language was the thing that really started to get our species' development rolling. Language allows conceptual development and concepts to pass between individuals. The most telling example of how important language can be in mobilizing human resources came in the last century, IMO.

Hitler was probably carried entirely into power by the force of his mouth. He was able to tap into all that rage strictly because of his mouth. Before that, Marx was able to transmit his sick ideas due to the written word.

Without communication, any sort of development by our ancestors was stifled because of the inability to pass on information gained, etc.