What was the fundamental cause of spoken language?

[Billy T]

I forgot to mention that one can carry around the atlatl for hours in the fully cocked state with little stress - ready to throw state. You can not do that with bow and arrow. Never know when a wild boar may appear from the bush while out hunting.

 

[arfa brane]

Beg pardon, Maori did have pottery, but they didn't use clay to make bricks or quarry stone either, they built only with wood but were able to construct quite elaborate buildings using stone tools. And that they did not have bows and arrows, quite common weapons in Indonesia, is interesting.

Maori arrived and found abundant game which was slow and easy to kill, then when that disappeared they started to compete tribally for resources, one of which was greenstone or jade. Whatever happened, the bow and arrow wasn't used, perhaps because it wouldn't have been effective in combat or to hunt with, in a place which is mostly thick bush with tracks through it, back then.

 

[sculptor]

In archaeology: We find the atlatl in Europe and Australia. Unless it was invented in two locations, we could assume a date for invention before the last migrations to Australia.
In europe we have good evidence for at least 17,000 years ago, and most likely, that date does not accurately represent the first use of the tool.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Beg pardon, Maori did have pottery, but they didn't use clay to make bricks or quarry stone either, they built only with wood but were able to construct quite elaborate buildings using stone tools.

The definition of "pottery" requires that it be fired. It is a Neolithic technology--the "Late Stone Age," when an explosion of technologies, including farming and animal husbandry, were discovered. Carved stone and carved wood are Paleolithic technologies (the "Early Stone Age") that do not qualify as "pottery," a much more complex process that requires, for example, the ability to make much hotter fires.

And that they did not have bows and arrows, quite common weapons in Indonesia, is interesting.

Many early technologies were invented/discovered independently in multiple places at different times. Boats, animal husbandry, farming, bronze, writing, the bow and arrow...

In archaeology: We find the atlatl in Europe and Australia. Unless it was invented in two locations, we could assume a date for invention before the last migrations to Australia.

As noted above, many technologies were discovered/invented independently in multiple locations at multiple times. Agriculture, for example, was discovered independently in Mesopotamia, India, China, Egypt, Mexico, South America and what is now the eastern region of the USA. It may have also happened in a few other places, but we don't have enough evidence to be sure that it wasn't simply brought in by travelers.