Linguists like to argue!?

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

The idea that language was somehow "invented" (like the clothespin or the condom) rather than generated by the evolution of the species (like the bipedal gate)is in itself "preposterous."
>
>James A. Landau writes:
>
>Someone who wishes to argue that IE is unrelated to other language families
>must then, by my analysis, argue that the predecessors of the PIE speakers
>INVENTED language sometime shortly after the END of the Ice Age, with no
>input from the proto-Basques etc.  who were their neighbors in the late Ice
>Age.  (Perhaps the proto-Basques etc. independently invented language after
>the end of the Ice Age as well).  I find this to be a preposterously late
>date for the invention of language, considering that Cro-Magnon man was
>creating cave art DURING the Ice Age, and I can't imagine Cro-Magnon man
>inventing art before having language.
>