From the moment we’re born, how we relate to each other and to the world around us depends so so much on what we hear and what and how we say it. The sounds we make as children and how we relate them to our parents for example shows a striking commonality the world over. The evolution of language for a person and even a species stretches so far beyond back... back beyond our knowing, beyond our remembering and it is of course intriguing. The striking similarities of sounds that we make in early infancy that offer us comfort (the m and d sounds of mum and dad) are shared by a multitude of highly diverse cultures across the globe.
The development of our social bonds helped determine the accompanying development of our language. How we speak and what we say has always mattered, to bind us, as family groups, tribes and peoples. So that arc of language development and creativity takes us from prehistory right through to today. The nuance of the noises we make and the ideas we transmit within them is more ancient than any history.
The ancient inhabitants of this island have been finding ways to speak locally to our immediate peers, but also more regionally to our fellow tribes for over 30 millennia. As our interactions became deeper through our ability to travel more easily, we developed more ways to communicate more diversely. And with the later formalisation of writing and reading, we strike a crucial moment in our developmental story, so much later on than our aural linguistic traditions. But we never stopped singing when we started writing.
If we think that only for some 5,000 years have we been reading and writing as a species, isn’t it astonishing the progress that we have made since? And not just the notation of words but of thoughts and ideas in the sciences as well as the arts, that describe phenomena not just of this world, but around very distant suns.
The ancient art of writing came to Ireland long after cuneiform was developed in ancient Mesopotamia but with the development of Ogham, we not only see the emergence of writing but its interaction of music, art and intercultural connection with neighbouring lands and of course with Christianity. At the same time, on neighbouring shores, ancient Celtic languages vied with Latin and later Germanic and later still French.
And in all this time, the words we use, the ideas we transmit, the promises we make, have become so embedded in our culture that we almost take them for granted - the promissory notes that translate to money, that has given way to the tap of a card; the bargains and contracts of handshakes and scribed onto vellum that today we enter into every time we click “accept” on our smartphones.
The sheer weight of words now that we encounter everywhere, everyday can be overwhelming. The Internet contains trillions upon trillions of words, in the mechanics of the software and the screeds of communications. But in all this, there are words that we recognise universally that mean more to all of us, that we have written about for aeons, that reverberate through our own lives and the lives of all people since the dawn of civilisation: Love, Peace, Freedom, Truth and Home. These central ideas continue to hold the most profoundly important place in our writings. They underpin so much of what makes us all who we are. They make up the vast bulk of our writings, ancient and modern. They are the ideas behind the words that have drawn writers to offer their thoughts, poets to offer their verse and philosophers to provide insight, down through the ages. And they continue to be so utterly part and parcel of who we are and how far we’ve come.
So this week, if you happen to be celebrating World Book Day along with millions of others, don’t just revel in the diversity of books and the joy our children derive from them; but instead take a moment to recognise the power of creativity, evolution, history and ideals that has forged our human development until this moment and to celebrate the good fortune to enjoy those core themes of Love, Peace, Freedom, Truth and Home if we can, and then recognise the plight of so many across the world who cannot in these immensely troubled times.
(Dedicated to David George Turkington RIP)
