In the Beginning Was the Sermon

Any glutton for glottogony
Can tell you the subject has been banned
More than once, not for outrageous claims

Or unsettling the powers that be,
But for sheer hot air and handwaving.
Everyone has a hypothesis—

Including hot air and handwaving
Themselves as the origins of talk—
Running the gamut from projectiles

And sequential planning to charades.
No one knows. No one knows. No one knows
Yet, not with any certainty, no.

There’s no definitive evidence.
You can find successful professors,
Authors of scads of quantitative

Research articles in peer-reviewed
Journals, still starting their book chapters
With drivel like, Since the dawn of time,

When introducing an overview
Of mythical and historical
Tales of the origin of language.

If the omphalos hypothesis
Could work for anything, it’s language,
And yet languages clearly evolve.

Etymology is the mother
Of evolutionary science
But has the shallowest of Deep Pasts.

Here we are, then, words in sentences.
When were the first sentences pronounced,
Or sung, or gestured, or stamped as dance,

Or symbolized by some flint-knappers
Skilled at the syntax of sequences?
We don’t know. We don’t know. We don’t know.