Melodies As Everyday Speech

The other day a woman died who was the last speaker of what could have been the world's oldest language. Called Bo, this language could be up to 70,000 years old by some estimations. The woman, named Bo Sr, lived in India's Adamans region among other people who also speak ancient languages.


Bo is a very melodic and enchanting language, as if the person is singing. And that raises an interesting idea. What if the earliest languages were innately musical? One of the things we know is that people can recall a song much more easily than other spoken material. An old memorization trick is to put the text to music, singing it.

Could it be that musical languages began to fade to more monotone alternatives after the invention of writing? When things are written down, there is less need to memorize them. Before writing it would be necessary to pass on everything verbally, and if the language is melodic, the ability to remember what is spoken accurately and completely increases dramatically.

It causes one to wonder if we ultimately lost something extremely valuable in the development of writing, offsetting a good portion of the gain.