ABSTRACT
In the present chapter it is proposed to consider what can have been the factors in the realm of animal behaviour that led to this starting-point. Xo a large extent the authors must here be content to make conjectures. But the nature of the human communities among which language first appeared is hardly a matter of conjecture. The most primitive method of subsistence, and the most primitive of the human communities known to us or imaginable, are those of the Food Gatherers, men who, like the animals, take their sustenance where they find it. All the societies of Food Gatherers known to us possess already a highly developed language with a mature and complex morphology and syntax. Animal life is manifested and characterized by actions or movements. The dead alone is utterly still. At the heart of the behaviour of animals and man is that which is known as instinct or instinctive behaviour.
