Origins.

I looked at the clock earlier to see whether I had time for something. ‘Oh,’ I thought, ‘I have oodles of time.’ And then I thought: ‘I wonder who the first person was to use the word “oodles” in that way.’ It would be very interesting to find out, wouldn’t it?

But then I realised you could go much further back than that and wonder who first coined a word for the wheel. And further back still, how did the humanoid species begin to use language in the first place? Was there a time when they communicated by grunts, pointing and general hand gestures? And if so, who was the first person to come up with the concept of using a specific word to describe something? Was there a person way back in the mists of time who realised that if he or she used different kinds of grunts, they could communicate without going to the trouble of pointing and waving their hands about? Is that how it worked? Does anybody know?

And then I thought what a shame it is that the person who effectively invented literature is completely unknown and therefore uncredited.