Era (इरा)

This document describes how human communication and language evolved over lakhs of years.
It divides the long journey into different “Eras” based on major changes in how our ancestors communicated.

1. नृत Era - Communication by Gestures and Body Movements

The earliest way to communicate was through gestures, dances, and body movements (called नृत).
This ability is very ancient — brain circuits for it exist in animals for over 50 –55 crore years (example: fiddler crabs use dance-like movements to show dominance¹).
Meaning comes directly from the brain’s natural wiring. No one needs to teach or learn it — both sender and receiver understand it intuitively.
No spoken sounds yet — only physical actions.

2. वर्ण Era - Communication Using Basic Sounds

About 40.7 Crore years ago, sounds started replacing gestures for communication².
वर्ण are basic sound units (like individual speech sounds) whose meanings are built into the brain’s wiring and vocal anatomy.
These meanings are the same for everyone in the same species, no matter which language they later develop.
That’s why, even today, many human languages show strong links between certain sounds and their meanings³.
Unlike words, the meaning of individual वर्ण never changes — this is why they are called अक्षर or शाश्वत (eternal).
वर्ण meanings are not invented by any person — they are called अ-पौरुषेय (not man-made).
The only surviving text from this era that we know of is the शिव सूत्र.
We find it hard to understand these meanings intuitively today because our brains are overloaded with modern language use. Also, वर्ण cannot be fully explained using words (since words are made of other वर्ण too)⁴.

Sub-era: वर्ण समास

Animals and early hominins started combining वर्ण to create new, composite meanings (called वर्ण समास).
Research shows chimpanzees⁵, monkeys⁶, suricates⁷, whales⁸, and some birds⁸ can also combine sounds this way.
Early Hominini (our direct ancestors) definitely had this ability⁹.

3. धातु Era - After Habitual Bipedalism (Walking on Two Legs)

Starts with the genus Homo (around 60–70 lakh years ago) and ends around 33 lakh years ago.
Bipedalism changed the shape of the mouth, throat, and vocal tract.
This created clearer distinctions between sounds like अ, इ, उ (possible because the oral and pharyngeal cavities became angled).
Nasal sounds were sharper, and ऋ, ऌ could be pronounced without the tongue touching the roof of the mouth.
But there was still no clear difference between verbs (actions) and nouns (names/things) — the same sound combination could be used for both.
This era comes after the rise of naming things (संज्ञा revolution) but before the tool-making revolution (डुकृञ्).
Homo developed very short, compact sound units (Homo-वर्ण) that carried more information and used less working memory¹⁰.
This freed up brain space for more complex combinations and for names (संज्ञा) to develop.
A large amount of ancient material from this era is still preserved in the form of some of धातु पाठ, उपसर्ग, प्रत्यय, निपात, ऊणादि गण, etc.
These are very early वर्ण समास from the Hominini period.
They have been preserved with extremely high accuracy — even sounds that later humans could no longer pronounce were kept exactly as they were¹¹.

4. डुकृञ् Epoch - Stone Tool Era

Starts with the making of stone tools (~33 lakh years ago¹²) and lasts until seafaring (~10–15 lakh years ago¹³).
The difference between verbs and nouns begins to appear, but is not fully fixed yet.
Concepts of वचन, पुरुष, लिंग and काल - number (singular/dual/plural), person (I/you/he), gender, and tense do not exist yet.
Institutionalised teaching (passing knowledge systematically) begins in this era — a mix of speech and action.
This institution of teaching is why शिव सूत्र survived — they were originally linked to gestures (नृत), but the gestures were later lost.

5. तिङ् Era - Seafaring Era

-This Era starts with तिङ् प्रत्यय emergence and ends with evolution of language that is identifiable as संस्कृत - with सुप , तिङ्, वचन, पुरुष,लिंग, काल, उप सर्ग, प्रत्यय, विकरण, अव्यय, प्रातिपदिक and पद.

Begins around 10–15 lakh years ago with seafaring.
Verb and noun distinction becomes fully clear.
Concepts of number, person, and tense appear as grammatical concepts.
Verb endings (तिङ् प्रत्यय) develop — when read through their वर्ण समास, they all relate to seafaring activities.
Formal education for language and life skills grows a lot.
This helps preserve धातु पाठ and सूत्र पाठ with high accuracy, even though later humans could not pronounce all the original sounds.
Institutionalisation and respect for these texts helped them survive major disasters like many LGM (with Homo Erectus) and the Bølling-Allerød & Younger Dryas (with Homo Sapiiens with sizeable loss in texts).
तिङ् Era starts with seafaring, somewhere around 10-15 lakh year ago and ends at some point before the Bølling-Allerød & Younger Dryas. We do not know when.

6. पूर्व संस्कृत Era

Language develops into what we recognise as early संस्कृत (through Panini’s work).
Starts sometime after the तिङ् era (Homo Erectus) and ends with the Bølling-Allerød & Younger Dryas catastrophe (~12,000 years ago).
Bølling-Allerød & Younger Dryas (or earlier Interglacial events) caused huge migrations — the first big wave of human movement across the world.
Many languages around the globe show Sanskrit-like roots because of this migration.
Core of the वेदाङ्ग (grammar, phonetics, etc.) comes from this period and is older than the वेद we know today. वेदान्त is different and occurred post वेद.

7. वैदिक or उत्तर संस्कृत Era

Starts after the Bølling-Allerød & Younger Dryas (~12,000 years ago) and ends when the Sarasvati River fully dries up (~1500 BC).
Agriculture, pottery, and city life develop.
This is the time of the Sarasvati (Indus-Harappan) Civilisation. This is वैदिक civilization. Almost all hymns that we have today are composed in this period. The concept of knowledge being eternal and words being “seen”, are श्रुति and स्मृति from pre- Bølling-Allerød & Younger Dryas teachings about developement of language. Concepts of अ-पौरुषेय words seen by दृष्टा ऋषि , are memories (स्मृति) of teachings about emergence of language in पूर्व संस्कृत Era. Most likely those teachings, now lost except for वेदाङ्ग, were also called वेद.
By this era, the Sanskrit language as we know it is fully formed and has lost understanding of its own evolution. प्रत्यय are known. But what that प्रत्यय means and why it has a particular usage, is largely lost.
It is known that all words have derived meanings. And It is painfully acknowledged that those meanings are lost/being lost.

8. Churn Era

This Era begins when सरस्वती starts drying and ends when migrations caused by the drying are complete.
Many Bronze Age civilisations collapsed worldwide as indirect result of सरस्वती drying out.
This is the second major wave of migration.
भागीरथ efforts are made to bring moving to periphery (गङ्गा) with temporary success. Eventually moving populations east, abandoning of irrigation (इंद्र) for गो-वर्धन and pushing peripheral ङ (नाग) people further east.
Huge efforts are made to preserve sacred literature — institutions were created to memorise and protect the वेद before the catastrophe wipes out knowledge. This collection, compilation and preservation is the reason we have access to वेद and earlier learning material of the वेदाङ्ग.

9. Classical संस्कृत Era

Begins after the migrations from drying Sarasvati are complete.
People settle in new areas (especially Gangetic plains).
Sanskrit continues to evolve into regional languages, but the form that existed at the time of Sarasvati drying is carefully preserved unchanged.
Generations devote their entire lives to memorising वेद and वेदाङ्ग exactly.
Because of this unbroken tradition of perfect preservation — even when meanings became hard to understand — we still have:
- शिव सूत्र (possibly 33 lakh years old)
- धातु पाठ and सूत्र पाठ (10–33 lakh years old)

Footnotes:

Fiddler Crabs of the World by Jocelyn Crane ↩
Jorgewich-Cohen and others https://www.sci.news/biology/acoustic-communication-11333.html ↩
Sound–meaning association biases evidenced across thousands of languages by Damian Blasi https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1605782113 ↩
I will try to explain meanings of वर्ण as i have understood/deciphered in other parts of this work and we will see why it is not easy task. Understanding वर्ण ↩
Versatile use of chimpanzee call combinations promotes meaning expansion by Cederic Girard-Buttoz and others https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adq2879 ↩
Campbell’s monkeys concatenate vocalizations into context-specific call sequences by Karim Outtara and others https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0908118106 and Formal Monkey Linguistics : The Debate. and Extensive compositionality in the vocal system of bonobos by Berthet, Surbeck & Townsend, 2025 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adv1170 ↩
The acoustic structure of suricates’ alarm calls varies with predator type and the level of response urgency by M B Manser, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1088882/ ↩
works of Payne & McVay ↩ ↩²
We can extend this back to Great Apes if compositionality can be proved in Gorillas. All other extant Great Apes have compositionality (ability to make वर्ण समास) - Humans, Chimps, Bonobo, Orangutang. ↩
The phonological loop as a language learning device By A Baddeley and others. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9450375/ ↩
I am talking about ऋ and ऌ as स्वर and all म-कार being mixed up at times. I also believe not everything is preserved because I interpret “स्मृताः” in पाणिनीयशिक्षा 4 as “others are विस्मृता.” But what is preserved has been preserved over a few lakhs of years. An unimaginable feat for spoken sound. and i am grateful to all generations who spent their live working as memory bank for this preservation. Without succumbing to temptation to “correct” what had become unintelligible, example being ऌ. ↩
3.3-million-year-old stone tools from Lomekwi 3, West Turkana by Sonia Harmand and others https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14464 ↩
Hominins on Sulawesi during the Early Pleistocene by B Hakim and others. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09348-6 ↩

Origin of Speech

Explorer

Era simplified