THE FIRST WORD EVER

It's incredible what they can figure out about the past these days isn't it? Did you hear that they've discovered the first word ever? Just think, the first word ever used by our species. They found it plastered onto the walls of various troglodyte abodes. They carbon dated it and it predates the hell out of sanskrit. This first word was depicted by a single letter of sorts that was just a simple handprint. Seriously, the 'letter' looked like a basic outline of a hand. The troglodytes just had to daub their hands in pigment, slap them on the side of a cave, and they had written the word. They reckon that this handprint word was the only word used by early man for several generations. Early man never said anything else, just this first word, over and over. They've even figured out how the word was pronounced. Apparently it sounded like a bark. Just a big fuckin 'woof!'. Mad isn't it? Of course, this first word ever was eventually joined by other words, which led to sentences and grammar and a linguistic sophistication that allowed us to say complicated things to each other and drive each other crazy.

I've no idea how they know all this about the first word ever but the evidence has been peer reviewed and it all seems scientifically sound. It did take them a long time to figure out what the word meant but even that was eventually deciphered. For a long time it was assumed that the first word ever would mean something simple like 'danger' or 'hungry' or 'me' or even, as one sentimental anthropologist optimistically postulated, 'love'. But no, interestingly it turns out that the first word ever didn't mean any of these things. The first word ever meant 'pardon?'