In the long process of historical development, the emergence of language and human beings of language families have formed a survival group, resisting the invasion from nature. Constant labor and social practice have promoted the improvement of human intelligence and the formation of concrete, intuitive and meticulous thinking tendency. People learn to transmit information, spread experience and exchange ideas in long-term labor. At first, people used gestures, a kind of "pseudo-latent language", to express their thoughts and feelings. When they encounter joy, pain and sadness, their emotional expression will move forward with the help of gestures and make a sound. In addition, primitive humans have been dealing with animals for a long time in nature, resulting in primitive languages that imitate the sounds of nature and animals. The basic condition for the emergence of "mimetic language", emotional language and onomatopoeia language is people's thinking consciousness, and natural environment, labor and other factors promote the emergence of language. The original language has certain characteristics. As far as specific things are concerned, it is rich, but it lacks vocabulary to reflect comprehensive concepts. Another feature of the original language is that each sentence contains few words. Early human language and thinking promoted and influenced each other. People strengthen language communication in collective communication such as music, dance and religious ceremonies. At the same time, language communication further stimulates the development of people's intelligence and the improvement of their thinking consciousness, thus producing coherent syntax in language.
The primitive language of human beings is vague and uncertain, so there are different opinions about the origin of language. Christians have always believed that human language ability is given by God in the past 1000 years. Muslims in the Middle Ages believed that God gave human language; The Indian Brahmanism classic Veda regards "language" as a goddess, and language is a special gift given to mankind by God. Religion connects language with it and deifies it. There are many scientific and popular theories about the origin of language: Socrates believes that the formation of language can not be separated from gestures, which was developed in Renaissance Dalgarno. He believes that when human beings communicate with gestures to a certain extent, they produce sounds; Emotional theory holds that human beings make sounds because they are stimulated by joy, pain and sadness. Plato put forward the representative theories of human origin, and later the German philosopher Heidel Leibniz developed this theory, and specifically explained that the ancient language of human beings was produced by people imitating the sounds of nature, especially animals. Throughout the history of language development, there are indeed many onomatopoeia words in the languages of all nationalities in the world, such as cats and crickets in China; English cock crows (adoodledoo); The cuckoo call highlights the onomatopoeic words of "cuckoo, cuckoo" in Chinese and the word cuckoo in English. Marx and Engels believe that human language originated from human labor, because labor can make people's pronunciation organs more and more developed. With the progress and enrichment of human production and life, people have rich communication content. When it comes to "have something to say", language comes into being. In short, the production of language has a long, complex and gradual process; Secondly, the development of human intelligence is the internal factor of language production, and environment and labor are the external conditions of language production.
About the same time as the formation of human beings, language families gradually formed. Since the formation of language, there have been great differences between different people. However, because the natural environment and production and living habits in the same area or adjacent areas are similar or identical, the way they express things is getting closer and closer, and the way of vocal cord vibration is gradually unified and passed down, thus forming the same language family. The languages in the world can basically be divided into several language families. The language family is divided into language families, with branches and languages under them. According to the statistics and classification of linguists in different countries in different periods, although there are various language lineages in the world, the contents are similar. According to genealogy, linguists divide the world languages into ten major language families: Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, Altaic and Semitic. Finnish Ugric Language Family and Dehlavi Dian Language Family. Ibero-Caucasian, Malay Polynesian, South Asian, Bantu. However, due to the complexity of the world's languages, linguists have different divisions of language families and different names.
At present, more than 5,000 languages are spoken in more than 200 countries and regions around the world. William jones, a British scholar, was the first person to name the Indo-European language family. 1786, after comparing some similarities and corresponding laws among Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, he put forward the theory that the Indo-European language family should belong to the same language family, which has become the rule followed by all disciplines in language classification. Indo-European language family is the most populous and complex language family, with many languages and branches. Indo-European languages mainly include Germanic languages, Roman languages, Celtic languages, Baltic languages, Slavic languages, Indo-Iranian languages, Anatolian languages, Turkic languages, Armenian languages, Albanian languages and Greek languages. Among them, Germanic language is divided into several branches, and the western branches are: English, German, Luxemburg, Dutch and so on. The western branches of romanticism are Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Sardinian and so on. The Sino-Tibetan language family includes Miaoyao language family and Tibeto-Burman language family. Chinese language department, Dong-Tai (Zhuang) language department, etc. Among them, the Tibetan branch of the Tibeto-Burman family includes Tibetan, Jiarong and Menba. Chinese family includes official language and local dialects; The Taiwanese (Zhuang-Thai) branch of the Dong-Tai language family includes Zhuang, Dai, Thai, Yi, Buyi and Lao.
The appearance and types of primitive characters After primitive humans learned to use a specific language, the language that leaves no trace can no longer meet the needs of society. People began to seek means to facilitate memory and communication, so as to narrow the distance between human culture in time and space. As a result, with some inventions, the original characters began to sprout. The appearance of characters has gone through a process of germination, development and maturity. Primitive humans originally borrowed symbols of various objects to store certain information as communication tools to transmit simple digital information or express routine life content; When entering the matriarchal clan commune, people use pictures as tools to record facts and express their thoughts; At the end of primitive society, there appeared characters that used the image symbols of some objects to express the true meaning of some consciousness. From the initial notes to the appearance of real characters, it has gone through three stages: description and knotting, picture writing and hieroglyphics. The materials for engraving are generally stones, bone blocks, bamboo, etc. Notes are recorded by Australian nicks and lines. The ending note is a special symbol, which is used to convey information and help memory. The number, size and color of ropes and knots, as well as the distance between knots, all have certain meanings. Pictures and words are generally used to represent various concrete things, such as people, trees, arrows and various animals, and most of them are painted on bark, stones, bones, pottery or leather. On the basis of pictures and characters, hieroglyphics have been produced. The above three types of characters have their own characteristics: lettering and knot notes can only express quantity, but cannot reflect the characteristics and nature of things; General pictures and words can only reflect the content to be described, but not the form of language, so it is difficult to express abstract and complex concepts, but they are very vivid and intuitive; The key point of hieroglyphics is that the symbol number not only represents a certain meaning, but also represents a certain pronunciation.
Hieroglyphs later evolved into ideographs. In ideographs, images are gradually replaced by defined symbols, which are associated with certain pronunciations. Therefore, ideographs represented by hieroglyphs and phonography developed ideographs on this basis, and letters were used to represent languages, forming three types of characters.
The study of historical materials and archaeological materials shows that most people from different regions and nationalities have similar experiences in their formation. Notched bone blocks have been found in Central Africa, and bone blocks with lines have been found all over the world, and there are examples of carving wood, bamboo and arrows. China, Japan, Persia, Egypt, Mexico and Peru have all been popular in knotting, among which the knotting of Incas in Peru is the most developed. India added a rope of one color as the main rope, and tied different colored strings on the main rope at regular intervals to represent various matters, such as red for military affairs and ranks, yellow for gold, and green for grain. Knotting a knot on the rope represents a number, single knot represents "10", double knot represents "20", double knot represents "100" and double knot represents "200". Demography, land boundaries, tribal markers, and declaration of war, criminal law, epitaph, etc. Are represented by this knot symbol. American Indians, Eskimos, some tribes in northern Siberia and tropical African tribes are all good at painting and writing. North American Indians have the most developed pictures and characters. They have the habit of recording a prominent event in a year, such as the Dakota tribal incident at 1800, and draw a human figure with red and black dots on it to indicate which year there was a pox epidemic. Rock paintings have been found in many places in China, including General Cliff in Lianyungang, Yinshan Mountain in Inner Mongolia, Youjiang River in Guangxi, Cangyuan in Yunnan and Qinghai. Hieroglyphs are common in ancient cultures of various nationalities in various regions, such as Egyptian hieroglyphs and hieroglyphs on prehistoric pottery in China.
The germination of primitive science and technology and the appearance of primitive human language, thinking and writing greatly facilitated the communication of primitive people in collective life, and provided many convenient conditions for accumulating experience, imparting and preserving experience. The interaction and promotion of language, thinking and writing developed the reasoning ability of primitive human beings and produced abstract concepts, which enabled primitive human beings to have a preliminary understanding of the causal relationship of some things in nature and gradually expanded their knowledge field. Humans have gone through a long and complicated process from food gatherers to food producers. In this process, human beings must constantly improve their means of survival, constantly surpass themselves and choose for survival. It is precisely because of these choices that scientific knowledge in civilized times began to sprout.
In the process of gathering and hunting, primitive humans made hooks, harpoons, bows and arrows, knives and axes and other tools suitable for gathering and hunting. When it is difficult to maintain food demand simply by gathering and hunting, human beings domesticate the captured wild animals in captivity according to their own habits of wild animals to supplement the shortage of food. Most early domesticated animals were chickens. Pigs, cows, sheep, etc. With the change of living environment and the decrease of hunting activities, primitive humans invented sickles to harvest wild plants (wheat, barley, millet, corn, etc. ) mature. At the same time, primitive humans began to master planting techniques after understanding the seasonal cycle of plant growth. When primitive agriculture and animal husbandry appeared, there was no strict distinction between primitive agriculture and animal husbandry and gathering and hunting in many parts of the world. Primitive agriculture, animal husbandry and gathering and hunting complement each other, ensuring the food source of primitive humans. Primitive agriculture and animal husbandry technology greatly promoted the process of human development.
Hunting technology appeared after primitive humans mastered the laws of animal movement. They catch wild animals by hunting or dispersing them and setting traps, shoot down birds with short spears and arrows, and fish with hooks and harpoons. But they didn't kill all the animals they could catch, but followed the principle of no hunting.
The animals domesticated by primitive people were sheep, goats and dogs, followed by horses, pigs and cows. The crops planted by early primitive humans mainly included wheat, barley, rice, millet, jade, potato, cotton, sunflower and various vegetables and beans. In the process of planting, we will also learn the technology of loosening the soil to remove weeds.
When primitive humans began to settle down, people had more leisure time and abundant means of subsistence, and enjoyed housing, furniture, daily utensils and tools. Pottery-making technology and weaving technology have enriched human life. The emergence of pottery-making technology is directly related to storing goods and cooking food. Pottery is suitable for fixed storage, not for mobile storage, and woven baskets facilitate the need for mobile storage. After primitive humans widely mastered the knitting principle, woolen fabrics, flax and cotton fabrics appeared (flax was cultivated by Egyptians in 3000 BC).
At first, the raw materials for weaving were mostly soft tree strips, and containers such as baskets and gourds were earlier vessels. Gradually, people mastered the technology of making pottery. In the late Paleolithic period, people were able to twist the wool of sheep, goats, dogs or other animals into thick threads, and then weave the thick threads into ribbons, linen belts and even thick blankets. In the Neolithic Age, people used cultivated flax, cotton, hemp and other plant fibers to process into textiles, and the primitive textile industry gradually developed.
Fire is inseparable from human life. The use of fire is a great achievement of primitive mankind. At first, natural fires were used, and later people learned to make artificial fires. In the hunting era, fire was used to resist the invasion of wild animals and barbecue food. In the farming era, fire was used for indoor lighting, heating, cooking food and slash and burn. The application of fire proved for the first time that man dominated the forces of nature.
Medicine and disease prevention have existed in the life of primitive people. Primitive medicine is often combined with witchcraft. At the end of the Paleolithic period, witch doctors or wizards were not completely divorced from production activities, but gradually divorced from the activities of producing food and making tools and practiced witchcraft full-time. Witch doctors or wizards are mostly virtual when expelling "diseases", but they have also mastered some techniques of using surgery and treating diseases with plants, minerals and animals as medicinal materials.
Archaeological data show that farmers in Kroma, who lived 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, have been able to perform surgery with flint tools-"circular saw", that is, saw the skull to treat diseases, and then stitched the scalp. This method is used to treat fractures, epilepsy, migraine and depression. Witch doctors of the Kimpian people living in Alaska often use terrible growls to treat diseases. If this method doesn't work, cut off the diseased part with a knife, or suck out the carrion and burn it, thinking that this will drive away the "devil". The indigenous people in ancient Peru used the bark of the local wild cinchona to treat diseases. There is a legend in China that "Shennong tasted a hundred herbs before taking medicine".
Humans living in the natural environment should pay attention to accumulating astronomical knowledge and geographical knowledge for survival needs. Although the formation of this knowledge is directly related to nature worship, they have always mastered some regular knowledge about astronomical geography. They can divide the four seasons according to the alternation of cold and summer, and predict the snow according to the signs of nature. Rain, thunder, electricity, wind and other weather phenomena. Identify the direction according to the position of the stars, and be familiar with the geographical location and natural conditions of the active area, as well as the direction of mountains, hills, forests, coasts and lakes.
Mathematical knowledge germinated in primitive times, and its appearance is directly related to population calculation and food distribution. Because primitive people's thinking is concrete, they didn't have the concept of abstract counting at first, but only knew "more" and "less" Later, they gradually learned to use concrete objects as calculation tools, and finally formed the abstract concept of numbers. Abstract the initial concept of number from concrete things, which is also the bud of logical thinking.
In the process of hunting pigs and domesticating animals, people can only distinguish 1, 2 and 3 from concrete objects, but can't abstract the three numbers "1", "2" and "3". Some primitive tribes only know the numbers "1", "2" and "3", and all numbers above "3" are represented by many numbers. Primitive tribes thought that the maximum number was "5" or "10", and if it was greater than this number, it was generally called "many" or "many". These numbers are related to fingers and toes.
The significance of the germination of primitive science and technology from Paleolithic to Neolithic, from agricultural revolution to industrial revolution to scientific and technological revolution, is the development process of human social productivity from low to high. The development of social productive forces has continuously improved the quality of human existence and made human beings move from primitive civilization to highly developed civilization. In a sense, the germination of primitive science and technology is the ladder for human beings to move towards advanced civilization and the foundation for the development of advanced civilization. The knowledge of animal domestication and plant cultivation laid the foundation for later biology. Humans have changed from food gatherers to food producers, and their dependence on nature has been greatly weakened, which makes human civilization possible, which is an epoch-making progress in the history of human development. The improvement of hunting tools and the use of fire, as well as the emergence of ox plows, were pioneers of steam engines, internal combustion engines, generators and nuclear fission reactors. The shallow knowledge of geography and astronomy is the bud of geography and astronomy later; The initial medical knowledge laid the foundation for later surgery and pharmacology; Mathematical knowledge made the development of private ownership economy and material exchange possible.