What Language Did Cavemen Speak? (Explained!)

Cavemen were hunter gatherers who lived in caves or huts or tepees. They used basic tools made from stone and bone and hunted wild animals. They lived during the Paleolithic Period which lasted from around 2.5 million BC to 10,000 BC and are theorised to have spoken the Proto-Human language.

The Proto-Human language, also known as the Proto-World language or the Proto-Sapien language, is a hypothetical direct predecessor of all the world’s spoken languages (it is not considered an ancestor to sign language).

Any commentary on the Proto-Human language is speculative and open for criticism.

The first ever attempt to estimate the date of this ancestral language resulted in a estimate of between 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.

Some have contested this saying that such a language is only likely to have appeared 50,000 years ago while others theorized between 150,000 and 350,000 years ago.

The idea of trying to reconstruct such a Proto-Human language has also been rejected by some, saying that too much time has elapsed between the origin of the human language and now and any efforts would be inaccurate and linguistically embarrassing.

In This Article

What Words Did Cavemen Use?

Cavemen would have had a limited vocabulary much less complex than the languages of today.

It would have been made up of the world they could see around them.

This would have included things like familial relations such as “mother” and “father”, terms to describe actions like “to hear” and objects such as “water” or “tree”.

How Did Cavemen Communicate?

Modern depictions in movies and popular culture show cavemen communicating with one another by grunting.

It has been theorized that in addition to language, cavemen used a lot more hand signals and body language.

Primitive cave paintings have been found which may suggest an ability to communicate with others using this method.

Cavemen also communicated by fire, smoke, drums and whistles.

So, while Hollywood and other such industries might depict cavemen as beings that went around swing wooden clubs and grunting the whole time, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Did Cavemen Have Accents?

Yes! Cavemen did indeed have accents.

Of course, these accents didn’t refer to different sounding grunts but to the way actual words were spoken.

Accents played an important part in helping cavemen to protect themselves from enemies and intruders in their cave, tepees, huts and homes.

Where Did Language Originate From?

While it can’t be pinpointed with absolute certainty where language initially originated from the general consensus is that it came from Southwestern Africa.

It is also presumed that the language was spread to the rest of the world through a great migration of people around between 60,000 and 90,000 years go.

The migration occurred due to a sudden change in climate and the population first went to areas of Asia, then Oceania and then Europe.

What was the First Language?

While it is theorized that Proto-Human was the first language, it is possible that it never existed to begin with.

As Proto-Languages are speculative, no robust academic or linguistical analysis can be carried out on them.

It is possible that another language pre-dated this or that two proto-languages developed around the same time independently of one another.

What was the First Written Language?

Sumerian is the world’s first written language and its origins date back to over 5,000 years ago.

It was the language of ancient Sumer in Mesopotamia and was written in cuneiform, a logo-syllabic script.

What Is a Proto-Language?

The dictionary definition of a proto-language is, “a hypothetical lost parent from which actual languages are derived”.

When it comes to the language family tree, the proto-language is known as the “mother language”.

It can also be known by the German term Urspache or the primitive or common form of a language.

There are a large number of known proto-languages although it is likely there are others that have been undiscovered.

These Proto-Languages themselves can stem off into other Proto-Languages. Proto-Indo-European, the reconstructed ancestry of the Indo-European language family would be an example of this.

It gave rise to Proto-Italic which itself gave rise to Proto-Romance.

What is Proto-Indo-European?

Proto-Indo-European is the common ancestor of the Indo-European family which includes many of the world’s most spoken languages such as Spanish, English, Portuguese, Hindi, Russian, German, French and Italian.

More work has been put into reconstructing Proto-Indo-European than has been put into any other proto-language.

It is hypothesized that the language was spoken from 4,500 BC to 2,500 BC during the Late Neolithic to Early Bronze Age, though estimates on this vary by over a thousand years.

How Many Words Were in the Proto-Indo-European Language?

While it isn’t clear just how many words were present in the Proto-Indo-European language, linguists have currently settled on 207.

These words were used to represent things like Kinship, People, Pronouns and Particles, Numbers, the Body, Animals, Food and Farming, Bodily Functions, General Conditions, Natural Features, Directions, Basic Adjectives, Light and Colour, Positive Qualities, Construction, Motion and Unclassified Terms.

Some of the words used would have been “ḱwṓ” meaning dog, “átta” meaning father and “méhtēr” meaning mother.

Proto-Indo-European was never written down and in 1868, German linguist August Schleicher became the first ever person to create a text composed of the reconstructed version of the Proto-Indo-European language.

This was known as Schleicher’s fable.

Cavemen spoke a language known as Proto-Human which is the hypothetical ancestor for all of the world’s languages.

Unlike the grunting forms portrayed in today’s films and popular culture, they would have had a basic vocabulary and used a lot of hand signals and body language.

Proto-Human gave rise to other Proto-languages such as Proto-Indo-European, the common ancestor for many of the world’s most spoken languages.

More in Languages

Founder - @PollyWebster

Polly Webster is the founder of Foreign Lingo and a seasoned traveler with a decade of exploration under her belt.

Over the past 10 years, she has journeyed to numerous countries around the globe, immersing herself in diverse cultures, traditions, and languages.

Drawing from her rich experiences, Polly now writes insightful articles about travel, languages, traditions, and cultures, sharing her unique perspectives and invaluable tips with her readers.

Was this article helpful?

Thanks for your feedback!