And when one tries to comprehend anything, what is needed is language. Without language, thought and consciousness become unimaginable. Yet hunting, as an instinctive behaviour of human beings, almost certainly arose before, or perhaps concurrently with, the capacity to employ formal language. Many anthropologists believe organized hunting drove the evolution of the capacity for structured language. At its basis, evolution is a change in the biochemistry of the organism.
Nobody knows when evolution first permitted speech.
The best estimates seem to be between 100,000 and 300,000 years ago. The growth rate of language acquisition probably followed a similar pattern to that of other biochemical reactions, namely very quickly in the recent past after an enormously slow beginning. Most biological phenomena follow a logarithmic progression throughout time so looking backwards is almost as puzzling as trying to look forwards. We are in this reaction and it is still proceeding. Yet, to defend our desire to hunt requires a deep understanding of all our yesterdays. .