Verbatim quote · from the corpus

“Generative anthropology’s originary hypothesis is a scenario in which this conscious inhibition provides the gestural material for the first human sign, or word, which would consist simply in an ostensive gesture; in pointing. For, as Michael Tomasello and others have pointed out, the “joint shared attention” involved in pointing at something so that another will direct his attention to it is not practiced by animals. It is an exclusively human phenomenon, immortalized in the Zen koan: Look at the moon, not at my finger. And as for the origin of this new use of pointing, the originary hypothesis proposes that the pointing gesture originates as an aborted gesture of appropriation —reaching for an object, but breaking off the attempt to possess it on seeing another or others doing the same thing. For all cannot at once possess the object—but they can all point to it, designate it, refer to it: make it the referent of an ostensive , which is hypothetically the first linguistic sign. And as a consequence, the sign, in contrast to the appropriative gesture, can be simultaneously shared by any number of individuals. Hence its first appearance can be hypothesized to take place in a collective situation—for example, one in which the serial distribution practiced by apes, familiar through the Alpha-Beta-Gamma nomenclature its students have applied to it, in which the Alpha takes the cadaver of a hunted or scavenged animal, tears off his piece, then passes the rest to the Beta... has become, as a result of the intensification of mimetic desire with growing proto-human intelligence, no longer effective, its reflexive hierarchy breaking down in conflict.”

— Eric Gans, Understanding the origin of language and humanity · Saturday, October 25th, 2025 · Chronicles of Love & Resentment