Premise: Linguistics is the scientific study of language, and involves an analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context. The earliest activities in the documentation and description of language have been attributed to the 4th century BCE Indian grammarian Pāṇini, who wrote a formal description of the Sanskrit language in his "Aṣṭādhyāyī ".
Hypothesis: The earliest activities in the documentation and description of language are lost to history.