"Human language is in some ways similar to, but in other ways vastly different from, other kinds of animal communi­cation. We simply have no idea about its evolutionary history, though many people have speculated about its possible origins. There is, for instance, the 'bow-bow' theory, that language started from attempts to imitate animal sounds. Or the 'ding-dong' theory, that it arose from natural sound-producing responses. Or the 'pooh-pooh' theory, that it began with vio­lent outcries and exclamations . . . We have no way of know­ing whether the kinds of men represented by the earliest fos­sils could talk or not . . . Language does not leave fossils, at least not until it has become written ..." —Man in Nature, by Marston Bates

"But no animal up a tree can initiate a culture." —"The Simian Basis of Human Mechanics," in Twilight of Man, by Earnest Albert Hooton

Expressing a human need, I always wanted to write a post that ended with the word Mayonnaise.