Signs and circumstances

Milosz  "Encounter" (1936) in translation: that in the fields, a hare crossed the track which the wagon was following and a hand gestured.

Whatever one might not care for in the translation, or in the poem in Polish (two stanzas more follow), it is unlikely that Quinean scepticism need enter the picture for philosophy to ensue.

Another writer with a Nobel observes that he saw cranes (perhaps he saw herons or egrets) along a pond and that in some poses he noted what oould have been characters in some alphabet.

One might suppose that in that observation he came close to what Jaspers had meant- what could be seen as cypher in some living forms.

Inch backwards in geological time, our biological time, to an imagined circumstance preserved in no poem or notebook.

The shorter one says, "But unlike them, we speak a language."

If this were to translate some "first" for our species, even if soon forgotten by those present, I would not be quite convinced.  Try this:

   "Those others! Bah! Us-true-people speak true-words! Right!?!"

This seems closer, seems to have the more convincing weight and tone.

Perhaps

   "Prav Vlad Lud Slav"

has a closer hint to a proto-language than

   "True, People Words, to-speak!"

"prav" for both truth and right-handed.
"vlad" for those who rightly rule in this valley or these hills
"lud" for us, the people - Pan, if you prefer ... or Dene or Nihon-jin.
"slav" for both clever and famous and words recounted in tales (in some repetition of words and dance)

(By way of preface, in Polish the calumnious word for their western enemy was also that for the cockroach)

The more difficult is "those others". Are they to be imagined "speaking" as they cower there at the feet of the victors, murmuring or pleading? Were their males already dead? These may have been older sisters seeking to console, quiet the younger, lest they provoke further carnage with their weeping.

The moment of philosophy would almost be there were the superfluous observation made that "those others" also weep. If made by a son, a nephew, a clout to the head will correct the misapprehension. But if made by a courageous warrior...

When I was a child we were taught that only our species laughs and weeps. Now we hear the Pan paniscus laugh in its exhaling and inhaling.

You can read that the Greeks arrived at an understanding of themselves in relation to the speakers of barbaric through the invention of oral history.

It is noteworthy that in seeking to dominate the other through force, you need only look at the case of Vietnam where we see both France and the USA resorting to outrageous lies - as did the Third Reich with regard to the mechanized slaughter of the Poles - the pretext for war.

From the Old Testament, David must repent of contriving the death of Uriah.

The video recordings of the troupe of macaques capturing the old ladies in mourning about the fallen patriarch would seem to give us one hint of our beginnings. What is missing is the repetition of some mournful, grieving sounds. Imagine one observant old auntie suddenly emits a loud shriek, the same shriek emitted when the conniving, murdering male raped her daughter while she was still breast feeding: "J'accuse".

But how many thousands of times did some such beginning have to play and replay, repeat, be reinstated, re-engendered? You can imagine the powerful silver male soundly beating the females when he hears them at that mumbo-jumbo within his hearing, disturbing his nap with some intruding image of some misdeed of his or some fate that might befall him.

It is not for nothing that our cousins were named Pan troglodyte.

Homo sapiens sapiensis seems not quite right once a species has become explicitly reflective, even to the exclusion of the others, indeed via the exclusion of those others.  I suspect that we became

   homo sapiens sapiensis (excl)

perhaps even sooner than

   Pan techné

I wonder if swarming hominids without rudimentary signs could have annihilated - however slowly - any other species than hominid.

If we were the end of the Neanderthal, the big cats, the giant sloths, the passenger pigeon, do we not then merit a clearer designation as a species?

   Pan subcidé

the species that may annihilate that which is other, lesser, hated or vulnerable - and so named, "those others", the "slow-ones", the "cave-killers", the "barbarians".  Homocide, fratricide, matricide, genocide, infanticide - all that is missing is the term for those who wipe out a language, while enslaving its people - or simply by enforcing their own laws, their ancient teachings.

[noted at a time when languages continue to disappear and numerous primate species are understood to be at risk of utter extinction]