The interest in the nature of human languages appears to ( 1 ) when the human species evolved in the history of time. There is no culture that has left records that do not reveal either philosophical or practical concerns for this unique human characteristic. Different historical periods reveal different emphases and different goals ( 2 ) both interests have existed in parallel. Egyptian surgeons were concerned with clinical questions; an Egyptian papyrus, dated about 1700 BCE, includes medical descriptions of language disorders following brain injury. The philosophers of ancient Greece, on ( 3 ), argued and debated questions dealing with the origin and the nature of language. Plato, writing ( 4 ) 427 and 348 BCE, devoted his Cratylus Dialogue to linguistic issues of his day, and Aristotle was concerned with language from both rhetorical and philosophical points of view. The Greeks and the Romans also wrote grammars, and ( 5 ) the sounds of language and the structures of words and sentences. This interest continued through the medieval period and the Renaissance in an unbroken thread to the present period. Linguistic scholarship, ( 6 ), was not confined to Europe; in India the Sanskrit language was the subject of detailed analysis as ( 7 ) as the twelfth century BCE. Panini's Sanskrit grammar dated about 500 BCE is ( 8 ) considered to be one of the greatest scholarly linguistic achievements. In ( 9 ), Chinese and Arabic scholars have all contributed to our understanding of human language. The major efforts of the linguists in the nineteenth century were devoted to historical and comparative studies. Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), a Swiss linguist in this tradition, turned his attention to the structural principles of language ( 10 ) to the ways in which languages change and develop, and in so doing, became a major influence on twentieth-century linguistics.

Long before guns and arrows, spears were the tool of choice for ancient hunters. Topped with sharp, pointed rocks, spears at first made it possible to kill animals by stabbing them close-up. Later, spears were sturdy enough to be thrown at animals from a distance. Until recently, the earliest known throwing spears dated back 80,000 years. But a recent discovery in East Africa now extends that type of spear hunting to a far earlier time, one that precedes humans. It suggests that at least 279,000 years ago, an earlier, humanlike species must have been hunting big game, like hippos and antelope. Scientists dug up spear tips from that far back in time at a site in Ethiopia called Gademotta. Back then, during the Stone Age, tools were usually made from found materials like stone, wood or bone. Any early spear-throwers at that time weren't people but early ancestors of humans called hominids. Hominids are a family of primates that includes humans and their extinct ancestors (known only from fossils). The ancient hominids' spears most likely were long wooden poles topped with sharp, hand-chipped tips made from glassy volcanic rock, explains Yonatan Sahle, an archaeologist who has been studying the ancient spear tips made from this rock, known as obsidian. Given the tips' age, his team concludes that prehuman species must have spear-hunted too. His team reported its findings on November 13, 2013, in the journal PLOS ONE. The new finding challenges previously held ideas about the earliest throwers of stone-tipped spears, says archaeologist John Shea, who did not work on the new study. Previous studies had suggested ancient peoples started attaching stones to spears capable of stabbing animals close-up no earlier than 100,000 years ago. The new find shows that more complex throwing spears were made at Gademotta long before then. They probably belonged to a species "out of which the human species evolved in eastern Africa," Shea told Science News. Which hominid left behind the points? No one knows. Scientists have unearthed no prehuman fossils at the site.

For most of human history, science has been used alongside magic, religion, and technology to try to understand and control the world. Science might be something as simple as observing the sun rise each morning, or as complicated as identifying a new chemical element. Magic could be looking at the stars to foretell the future, or maybe what we would call a superstition, like keeping out of the path of a black cat. Religion might lead you to sacrifice an animal to appease the gods, or to pray for world peace. Technology might involve knowing how to light a fire or build a new computer. Science, magic, religion, and technology were used by the earliest human societies that settled in river valleys across India, China, and the Middle East. The river valleys were fertile, which allowed crops to be planted each year, enough to feed a large community. This allowed some people in these communities enough time to focus on one thing, to practice and practice, and become expert at it. The first "scientists" (though they wouldn't have been called that at the time) were probably priests. In the beginning, technology (which is about "doing") was more important than science (which is about "knowing"). You need to know what to do, and how to do it, before you can successfully grow your crops, make your clothes, or cook your food. You don't need to know why some berries are poisonous, or some plants edible, to learn how to avoid one and grow the other. You don't have to have a reason why the sun rises each morning and sets each evening, for these things to happen, each and every day. But human beings are not only able to learn things about the world around them, they are also curious, and that curiosity lies at the heart of science. We know more about the people of Babylon (in present-day Iraq) than we do about other ancient civilizations for a simple reason: They wrote on clay tablets. Thousands of these tablets, written almost 6,000 years ago, have survived. They tell us how the Babylonians viewed their world. They were extremely organized, keeping careful records of their harvests, stores, and state finances. The priests spent much of their time looking after the facts and figures of ancient life. They were also the main "scientists," surveying land, measuring distances, viewing the sky, and developing techniques for counting. We still use some of their discoveries today. Like us, they used tally marks to keep count; this is when you make four vertical marks and cross through these diagonally with a fifth, which you might have seen in cartoons of a prison cell, made by the prisoners keeping count of how many years they have been locked up. Far more importantly, it was the Babylonians who said there should be sixty seconds in a minute and sixty minutes in an hour, as well as 360 degrees in a circle and seven days in the week. It is funny to think that there is no real reason why sixty seconds make a minute, and seven days make a week. Other numbers would have worked just as well. But, the Babylonian system got picked up elsewhere and it has stuck.