What was the first word invented

I’m feeling liminal and whimsical.  Not an obvious pairing.  Unless you feel like teasing out the thread of hardened whimsy that marks most borders.  Anyway, here’s what keeps coming.  (And this time it’s not a surreal Dutch image.  By the way, nobody’s claimed it, but that one appears to have returned to wherever it came from.)

It’s this.

What was the first English word?  Who said it?  Who heard it?  When?  What was it understood to mean? 

I don’t mean in the sense that responsible historians must answer this question.  It’s not the kind of question responsible historians are likely to take up.  But if I’m wrong, and there is a respectable academic answer to this, I’d love to know it. 

I mean it in the sense that John Ruskin impossibly dated the beginning of the fall of Venice:

I date the commencement of the Fall of Venice from the death of Carlo Zeno, 8th May, 1418; the _visible_ commencement from that of another of her noblest and wisest children, the Doge Tomaso Mocenigo, who expired five years later.  — The Stones of Venice (1851)

If that isn’t liminal and (unintentionally) whimsical, I don’t know what is.  It may even be accurate.  Depends who you ask.

The formation of English was gradual.  It evolved without troubling itself to be born.  There was no first word.  At various times in the 5th century, the Angles, Saxons, Jutes and other northern Europeans show up in what is now England.  They’re speaking various North Sea Germanic dialects that might or might not have been mutually understandable.  Some of the original inhabitants of this area spoke Latin, and, because of the Church, the educated classes continued to speak Latin long after the newcomers settled in.  Old Norse gets mixed in when the Vikings come to call in the 9th and 10th centuries. Out of this hodgepodge of languages Old English, or rather different forms of Old English, (Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish, West Saxon) emerge in various places at various times.  Everything is in flux for centuries until – well, there is still no one standard version of English.  It’s still in flux.  I get that.

So there are no absolute borders here.  I get that, too.  I’m making one up because I’m a Victorian at heart and I’m obsessed with creating useless categories.  So I’m imagining (pretending?) that way back sometime, somebody, or several somebodies, somewhere in the British Isles (let’s make geography a marker, even though the words most likely arrived from elsewhere) was talking to somebody else.

And that person was using a language that, due to the percentage of words and phrases in  his speech that will become recognizably used in some version of Old English, one can reasonably say – this person is speaking early early early English, and no longer – I don’t know – speaking Old Frisian or Old Saxon or some other Ingvaeonic language.  And maybe that proto proto English only showed up in certain situations – like trade – and this person reverted to speaking the precursor most of the time, but there’s something in his speech, had it been recorded at that moment, that would support us saying, “That’s English!  That’s mother!”  Right there, hear it?  When he yelled at his horse?  Or bargained with a Northumbrian merchant?  Or complained to his wife?  Or got drunk and started a fight?

And of course that speech would have happened at a particular time on a particular day.  Seconds, minutes, hours, weeks, months before anybody else in the world happened to break into something that is arguably English and no longer a precursor language.  Somebody had to do it first.

If such an event did happen it’s lost to us.  It probably happened a lot.  It’s not linear.  I don’t mean one guy spoke English and everybody followed.  I mean – wouldn’t you just love to know where the first guy was and what he said when for however long – a minute? 30 seconds?  – his language crossed that border? 

Such things are sacred.  We cannot know them. 

Mother, bark and spit are just three of 23 words that researchers believe date back 15,000 years, making them the oldest known words.

The words, highlighted in a new PNAS paper, all come from seven language families of Europe and Asia. It's believed that they were part of a linguistic super-family that evolved from a common ancestral language.

PHOTOS: Faces of Our Ancestors

What this means is that if an Ice Age person from 15,000 years ago could hear you speak today, he or she could probably understand you, so long as you used these handful of words.

Here they are:

thou, I, not, that, we, to give, who, this, what, man/male, ye, old, mother, to hear, hand, fire, to pull, black, to flow, bark, ashes, to spit, worm You can tell that fire was a big deal back in the day. "Worm" comes as a surprise.

Mark Pagel of the University of Reading's School of Biological Sciences led the research. He and his colleagues began with 200 words that linguists agree are common among all European and Asian languages. They then determined which sounded similar and had comparable meanings across the different languages.

Next, Pagel and his team determined the roots of those words, resulting in the list of 23.

"Our results suggest a remarkable fidelity in the transmission of some words and give theoretical justification to the search for features of language that might be preserved across wide spans of time and geography," Pagel and his team wrote.

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Previously, researchers suspected that most words couldn't survive for more than 9,000 years. The estimated shelf life is due to replacement words and turnover in languages themselves, since entire languages can go extinct over time.

The timeless nature of the 23 words instead reveals their importance to us over millennia. Things like technology may forever change, leading to new words in our vocabulary. But fire ashes, spitting, old mothers, worms and more clearly are constants for us.

Check out this very cool page that lets you hear how some of the common words sound in various ancient languages. If you only have time to click on one, listen to how "to spit" is said in Kartvellan.

Image: Depiction of a Cro-Magnon hunting party slaying a woolly mammoth. Peet Simard/Corbis

Back in the Beginning

To put a human face on our ancestors, scientists from the Senckenberg Research Institute used sophisticated methods to form 27 model heads based on tiny bone fragments, teeth and skulls collected from across the globe. The heads are on display for the first time together at the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, Germany. This model is Sahelanthropus tchadensis, also nicknamed "Toumai," who lived 6.8 million years ago. Parts of its jaw bone and teeth were found nine years ago in the Djurab desert in Chad. It's one of the oldest hominid specimens ever found.

Australopithecus afarensis

With each new discovery, paleoanthropologists have to rewrite the origins of man's ancestors, adding on new branches and tracking when species split. This model was fashioned from pieces of a skull and jaw found among the remains of 17 pre-humans (nine adults, three adolescents and five children) which were discovered in the Afar Region of Ethiopia in 1975. The ape-man species, Australopithecus afarensis, is believed to have lived 3.2 million years ago. Several more bones from this species have been found in Ethiopia, including the famed "Lucy," a nearly complete A. afarensis skeleton found in Hadar.

Australopithecus africanus

Meet "Mrs. Ples," the popular nickname for the most complete skull of an Australopithecus africanus, unearthed in Sterkfontein, South Africa in 1947. It is believed she lived 2.5 million years ago (although the sex of the fossil is not entirely certain). Crystals found on her skull suggest that she died after falling into a chalk pit, which was later filled with sediment. A. africanus has long puzzled scientists because of its massive jaws and teeth, but they now believe the species' skull design was optimal for cracking nuts and seeds.

Paranthropus aethiopicus

The skull of this male adult was found on the western shore of Lake Turkana in Kenya in 1985. The shape of the mouth indicates that he had a strong bite and could chew plants. He is believed to have lived in 2.5 million years ago and is classified as Paranthropus aethiopicus. Much is still unknown about this species because so few reamins of P. aethiopicus have been found.

Paranthropus boisei

Researchers shaped this skull of "Zinj," found in 1959. The adult male lived 1.8 million years ago in the Olduvai Gorge of Tanzania. His scientific name is Paranthropus boisei, though he was originally called Zinjanthropus boisei -- hence the nickname. First discovered by anthropologist Mary Leakey, the well-preserved cranium has a small brain cavity. He would have eaten seeds, plants and roots which he probably dug with sticks or bones.

Homo rudolfensis

This model of a sub-human species -- Homo rudolfensis -- was made from bone fragments found in Koobi Fora, Kenya, in 1972. The adult male is believed to have lived about 1.8 million years ago. He used stone tools and ate meat and plants. H. Rudolfensis' distinctive features include a flatter, broader face and broader postcanine teeth, with more complex crowns and roots. He is also recognized as having a larger cranium than his contemporaries.

Homo ergaster

The almost perfectly preserved skeleton of the "Turkana Boy" is one of the most spectacular discoveries in paleoanthropology. Judging from his anatomy, scientists believe this Homo ergaster was a tall youth about 13 to 15 years old. According to research, the boy died beside a shallow river delta, where he was covered by alluvial sediments. Comparing the shape of the skull and teeth, H. ergaster had a similiar head structure to the Asian Homo erectus.

Homo heidelbergensis

This adult male, Homo heidelbergensis, was discovered in in Sima de los Huesos, Spain in 1993. Judging by the skull and cranium, scientists believe he probably died from a massive infection that caused a facial deformation. The model, shown here, does not include the deformity. This species is believed to be an ancestor of Neanderthals, as seen in the shape of his face. "Miquelon," the nickname of "Atapuerca 5", lived about 500,000 to 350,000 years ago and fossils of this species have been found in Italy, France and Greece.

Homo neanderthalensis

The "Old Man of La Chapelle" was recreated from the skull and jaw of a Homo neanderthalensis male found near La Chapelle-aux-Saints, in France in 1908. He lived 56,000 years ago. His relatively old age, thought to be between 40 to 50 years old, indicates he was well looked after by a clan. The old man's skeleton indicates he suffered from a number of afflictions, including arthritis, and had numerous broken bones. Scientists at first did not realize the age and afflicted state of this specimen when he was first discovered. This led them to incorrectly theorize that male Neanderthals were hunched over when they walked.

Homo floresiensis

The skull and jaw of this female "hobbit" was found in Liang Bua, Flores, Indonesia, in 2003. She was about 1 meter tall (about 3'3") and lived about 18,000 years ago. The discovery of her species, Homo floresiensis, brought into question the belief that Homo sapiens was the only form of mankind for the past 30,000 years. Scientists are still debating whether Homo floresiensis was its own species, or merely a group of diseased modern humans. Evidence is mounting that these small beings were, in fact, a distinct human species.

Homo sapiens

Bones can only tell us so much. Experts often assume or make educated guesses to fill in the gaps in mankind's family tree, and to develop a sense what our ancestors may have looked like. Judging from skull and mandible fragments found in a cave in Israel in 1969, this young female Homo sapien lived between 100,000 and 90,000 years ago. Her bones indicate she was about 20 years old. Her shattered skull was found among the remains of 20 others in a shallow grave.