So Easy, a Deaf Caveman Can Do It

You know that famous and well known Geico TV commercial featuring cavemen dressed in yuppie clothes who are proud clansmen for their hairy bodies and brutish looks who get easily offended for trying to be those uppity cultural urban sophisticates? On October 2, 2007 the ABC show 'Cavemen' will be the date for this new and, hopefully, funny show. I'm looking forward to watching it. I think it's a riot whenever I watch those cavemen on those Gieco TV commercials.

Now, with all the latest seizures over the s0-called lack of bonafide Deaf actors in television shows perhaps these people ought to write to ABC and suggest that they also include a deaf caveman character into the script somehow. I could only imagine what this deaf caveman may turn out into. Perhaps desperately trying to be just as sophisticated as his hearing cavemen while trying to sign but probably end up doing a lot of pointing anyway. You know how those hearing producers are like anyways on what they think is right.

While I'm on the topic of cavemen how did those cavemen communicate some "one million years" ago?

Linguistic Change

Both sign and speech communication have certain advantages and disadvan­tages for the general population; therefore, linguists theorize that vocaliza­tions came into free variation with signs (meaning you could grunt or point, whichever worked best at the moment). For a time, man used two different modes of communication: sign and speech.

As the millenniums went by, man moved from the open plains to the woods. Once there, sign communication no longer had the advantage over spoken communication. At that point in time, linguists believe that spoken lan­guages became the "prestige" languages -- simply and solely because they were more efficient "tools" for the majority of the population.

However, in spite of the diminishing popularity for sign languages, sign communication continued to exist ... as movements in ritualized ceremonies, or covert forms of communication, or simply because there was a segment of the population which couldn't -- or wouldn't -- access spoken lan­guages.

Did they sign more often than use their vocal cords to communicate? Did they really grunt alot or did a lot of pointing instead which may have been the first ever universal sign language by a hearing caveman? Did deaf cavemen even exist back then or were they left to die or fend on their own grunting unknowingly in silence? Or did those deaf cavemen even develope their own archaic and weird signs in the effort to and communicate? Or were they actually a bunch of mute cavemen who didn't do much but used their hands and maybe a few grunts to communicate? Or was it the "language gene" that catapulted those primitive cavemen in their ability to use their vocal cords to communicate more effectively?

Something to think about.

But before you reply, note the rules first.

UPDATE: Like I said, don't read too much into what I wrote just like when people read way too much into the upcoming 'Cavemen' show.