Ugg.

Why do we assume "early man" spoke in a series of grunts?

Do we have scientific evidence for that (fossilized speech tracts that showed they were incapable of articulate speech), or is it just popular conjecture?

Okay, yes, most of our art was extremely unsophisticated and we left no written records of the time - but wouldn't that necessitate a more elaborate oral culture?

We would have had to speak and sing our culture into being.

Without the written word we would have had to pass our history and culture on from one person to another by telling the stories of our world.  Wouldn't it make sense to assume that the vocabulary used to tell those stories would have been rich and varied?

The minutiae of daily life - the details that kept our children alive - would have been described by one generation to the next.  Wouldn't that old adage about "100 words for snow" apply to almost every aspect of our lives?

Imagine being an early hunter-gatherer.  Every shift in the seasons has a direct influence on your day-to-day life.  The smallest of details in the world around you are worth noticing and remembering - and telling the other members of your tribe.

"Uggs" just wouldn't cut it.

And at night, when it's too dark to do anything useful, you've finally got a few minutes of "down time" from your full-time job of surviving.  There's nothing else to do except dance, sing and tell stories.  You've got rhythm and your voice.

The rap battles must have been phenomenal...