Out of curiosity, I'm wondering what you believe were the first meaningful words ever expressed and understood by humans. I know they were probably grunts and such, but I'm wondering what they might have meant, what meanings they were supposed to convey.

I'm guessing that expressions for hunger and food were almost certainly the first, as the drive to prevent starvation was what consumed our primitive minds every day. There was also probably some sort of common mating call that both males and females uttered to signal that they were... well.. "in the mood." Anyone have any reasons to think otherwise?

FWIW, in Jean Auel's "Clan of the Cave Bear", the signal was a gesture, initiated only by the males.

"Welcome to Wal-Mart."

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the only thing that comes to my mind is "ouch", or "beer".

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oops

I can't imagine social apes needing a mating call. I'd have to go with "food" and "danger", especially given that these are two words that many species already have.

I have heard from a reliable source (now sadly deceased) that it was "let's immanentize the eschaton".

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I can imagine two early homo sapiens hanging out on a late summer day, watching the lady folk and one turns to the other and simply says... "duuude"

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Given the general focus of human nature (and most other nature, for that matter), it was probably "Me". Or maybe "Mine".

Seriously, though, language didn't evolve that way. There was no actual first word, just gradually evolving communication skills involving sounds, tonal qualities, facial expression, and body language. Many other species have significant communication abilities without words per se; the same was undoubtedly true for our ancestors as well.

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My thoughts exactly. Chimps have a variety of calls and hoots with different meanings. Over time these just got more complex, going from "danger" to "danger near" or "food" to "my food" or types of food. I would say the more interesting question to me is how grammar evolved; how did we start stringing words together. I suspect that work with teaching apes sign language and how they construct sentences might give us some insight on that.

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Hum,
from memory, `english` words like hole, apple, tin spring to mind.

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The first human languages must have been full of onomatopoeic 'words', I´d say.

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I would think it was something like "mama".
Or: "AAAAAGGH", short for: "I thought I saw a Smilodon!"

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And given how often we get 'out of words', there´s a hint that our conceptual horizon is still incomplete. We still need more adjectives.

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"This is MY large black rectangular thingy. Go away or I shall brain you with this thigh bone."

Yes, I understand that there was no very first word which was later written into a dictionary, that our spoken languages developed (and are still used) in association with body language. I'm sure that the very first forms of communication (between 2 or more humans) was composed of body motions, facial expressions and supportive grunts, but I konw that vocal communication had to have a start somewhere. I'm just wondering, if we could look back on history and attempt to pinpoint where the first spoken words eventually led to more complex languages, what would those words be?

"Me" and "mine" are really good guesses. They represent a very dominant aspect of human nature.

My guess is that grammar started out of a necessity for us to articulate past, present and future. We needed a way to say, "I have found food," instead of "I am going to find food," or "Escargot is a delicacy stemming from an old native tradition that I will never consume because I don't entirely comprehend the necessity to ingest a freaking slug with little to no nutritional value. I'm on a diet anyway."

As a writer, I completely understand what you are saying. There are so many useful words left to.... invent? create? See, there ya go, we need a word that is defined, "the act of creating a new word."

I couldn't tell you where, but I recall reading about some type of primate that researchers have observed using two types of their primate noises in conjunction to mean something else. What I read was that this primate had a sound to signal danger, and a sound to signal food, and that the alpha male would do something like 2 danger sounds and 2 food sounds, and then the entire group would casually move to some other spot in the forest. The assertion was that the combination meant neither danger, nor food, but something more along the lines of "Let's move to a different spot."

I personally suspect that danger and food were the first two ideas to get distinctive noises. Ever notice how the sound often made with a finger over the mouth to indicate silence, "Shhhh," sounds quite like the hiss of a snake?

I doubt that. My observation is that Wal Mart shoppers have barely got past grunting.

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I'll triple that. The transition (or evolution) from gestures and guttural sounds to language was probably so incremental and long-lasting that it would be a misnomer to label any one sound or group of sounds as a 1st word.

I'm sure a lot of early non-word sounds, grunts and gestures had general (and maybe specific) meanings before even abstract thought evolved.

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"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley