“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Many theories have been advanced throughout history to explain the origins of speech. Prior to the 17th century, extensive searches and studies were made for a “natural” or Adamic language, a basic form of human communication that was supposed to underlie all racial languages; no such universal protolanguage was ever isolated. As science now reaches back into human beginnings, the already scanty evidence gradually disappears, until finally it seems highly unlikely that the species will ever really know how or when its language and/or speech started.

Numerous forms of vocal communication — whether “true” speech or not, in current opinion — undoubtedly existed among the ancestors of our species for many millennia before the appearance of late Neanderthal man, however; according to conservative estimates such methods could have been in use for well over two million years, perhaps beginning even with our prehuman or animal stages. Jane and I find certain other research claims inconceivable: that in some of those earlier times verbal exchanges between members of the species, whether they be called prehuman or human, could have been a hindrance rather than an asset. To us, even the potential for audible communication has always been as much a part of our creature states as arms and legs. I’m only noting that such abilities represent one more means, upon a vast time scale, by which consciousness inexhaustibly seeks to know itself in this camouflage reality.

Seth tells us, of course, that prehuman communication and human language and speech have originated in rhythmic patterns again and again, since in the far past our planet has seen the development of a number of presently unknown civilizations. See, for example, his material on reincarnational civilizations and the Lumanians in Chapter 15 of Seth Speaks. In Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality, see his discussion on ancient man in the 702nd session, as well as Jane’s own material on the “innumerable species of man-in-the-making” in Appendix 6.