Before I can tell you about the three goats I saw, I need to be able to communicate verbally. So naturally, I turned to Wikipedia again to learn about the origin of language.
Incidentally, the origin of language is not without controversy. Indeed, as one might expect, theorizing was banned in nineteenth century France. You see, there is no physical evidence for the advent of language, obviously. Indeed, it is very difficult to find any year ranges put forth, as many archaeologists believe a predisposition for language is intrinsic and that language is effectively another symbol. The subject remains academically unresolved.
A lot of “pre-history” is like “fan fiction” to me. Like, maybe the theory is somewhat accurate, but when all you have is fossils, quite a lot of the narrative has potential to be very wrong. And so it is with language. Without language, your ability to count is quite limited. Similarly, you have no words to talk about anything. You quite likely have no name and, indeed, you probably have no reason to have a name.
I just read through / skimmed that Wikipedia post I linked above, and it frankly makes me more confident that humans are space aliens. None of the theories suggested by science seem particularly compelling. To the best of our knowledge, animals do not ever vocalize anything related to inner states or past or future. The prevailing notions are that humans have language as an element of evolution. Riiiiiiight. And I’ve got a bridge for sale that can get you from Manhattan to Brooklyn. 🙄
I would describe the most popular theories, but I think that’d be a waste of time. Either humans intrinsically understand language, or we don’t. In either case, we rely quite heavily on language today, to the extent that humans have many languages, both spoken and written, and we have many different signs and symbols that can quickly communicate information, even when the contents of the sign or symbol are unfamiliar. I do not intend to disregard the effort that went into designing those symbols, but I think the fact that the designers even have a sense of what to depict and how makes the point.