Viagens sem Literatura: as primeiras migrações das primeiras paleolínguas

Abstract

The origins of human language were officially banned, for over one century, from the scientific debate among linguists. Nevertheless, this issue which has never been forgotten in domains such anthropology, evolutionary biology or archeology, among others has returned into the linguistics agenda. Perhaps the most fascinating question arising from this debate has to do with how did language evolve from the primeval protolanguages and how did languages reach each inhabited place on earth. Paleo-historic and paleolinguistic evidence show us that, in the first millennia of hominization, Homo was an errant species, always carrying the most species-specific human property. It is possible to assume, thus, that, much before the great epics glorifying the most well-known human expeditions, several ancestral migrations, not registered by any historical recordings, took place. These made languages possible and, therefore, they may be seen as the most remote predecessors of literature.