"Bear with me. This language—the mother tongue—is a vestige of an earlier phase of human social development. Primitive societies were controlled by verbal rules called me . The me were like little programs for humans. They were a necessary part of the transition from caveman society to an organized, agricultural society. For example, there was a program for plowing a furrow in the ground and planting grain. There was a program for baking bread and another one for making a house. There were also me for higher-level functions such as war, diplomacy, and religious ritual. All the skills required to operate a self-sustaining culture were contained in these me , which were written down on tablets or passed around in an oral tradition. In any case, the repository for the me was the local temple, which was a database of me , controlled by a priest/king called an en . When someone needed bread, they would go to the en or one of his underlings and download the bread-making me from the temple. Then they would carry out the instructions—run the program—and when they were finished, they'd have a loaf of bread.