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Why Do Babies Gesture Before They Can Talk? | Glossart Languages
Why do babies point and gesture before they can speak? Explore how gestures, shared attention and human evolution reveal the ancient roots of language.
Evangelia Perifanou
10/14/20265 min read
Why Do Babies Gesture Before They Can Talk? The Ancient Roots of Human Communication | Glossart Languages
What if language begins before we ever say a word? Explore how babies use pointing, gestures and shared attention to communicate—and what these early behaviours might reveal about the ancient roots of human language.
Before babies can say “I want that,” they reach for it.
Before they can ask “What’s that?”, they point.
Before they know the words for hello or goodbye, they may already be waving, looking towards an object or raising their arms to be picked up.
Communication, it seems, begins long before the first word.
But why?
And could the way babies communicate before they learn to speak tell us something about the deeper history of human language?
Communication before words
During the first years of life, children gradually discover that they can use their bodies to communicate intentions.
A pointing finger can mean:
Look at that.
Outstretched arms can mean:
Pick me up.
A shake of the head can communicate:
No.
These gestures may seem simple, but something remarkably complex is happening.
The child is discovering that another person can understand a signal, follow their attention and respond to what they are trying to communicate.
This becomes particularly interesting when babies begin to point.
They are not always pointing because they want something.
Sometimes, they simply want another person to notice the same thing.
A child sees a dog, points towards it and looks at their parent.
The parent follows the gesture:
“Dog!”
For a brief moment, the child and the adult are focusing on the same thing.
This is known as joint attention, and it plays an important role in early communication and language development.
A pointing finger can become a word
Imagine a baby pointing towards a bird.
An adult notices and says:
“Bird.”
The child hears a sound while looking at the object.
Another day, they hear the word again.
Little by little, sounds begin to acquire meaning.
Of course, children do not learn vocabulary simply because adults name everything they point at. Language development is much richer than that. Children listen, imitate, experiment and interact with the people around them.
But shared attention creates valuable opportunities for words and meanings to meet.
Before children can produce hundreds of words, they already have another resource available to them:
their bodies.
Did human language begin with gesture?
This leads to a much bigger question.
If gesture appears so naturally in early communication, could it also tell us something about how human language evolved?
There are theories suggesting that gesture may have played an important role in the evolution of human communication. Our ancestors may have combined movements, facial expressions and vocalisations as increasingly complex communication systems developed.
But there is an important limitation.
We cannot observe the first human conversations.
Spoken language leaves no fossil.
So we cannot confidently say that humans first communicated through gestures and only later developed speech. The origins of language remain an area of debate, and gesture is one part of a much larger story.
Still, one thing is easy to observe today:
Learning to speak does not make our gestures disappear.
We still speak with our hands
Watch two people having an animated conversation.
Their hands move.
They point.
They demonstrate size and distance.
They indicate direction.
They shrug.
Their facial expressions change.
Sometimes we even gesture while talking on the phone—when the person listening cannot see us.
Our bodies continue participating in communication even when we have thousands of words available to us.
Think about trying to describe a spiral staircase, the size of a fish you caught or the route somebody needs to follow.
Your hands may begin moving before you consciously decide what they should do.
Gesture is not simply decoration added to speech.
It can become part of how we organise and express meaning.
When words and hands work together
This relationship becomes particularly visible when we are searching for a word.
Imagine trying to explain something in a language you are still learning.
You know what you want to say.
The word refuses to arrive.
Your hands take over.
You point.
You demonstrate the shape.
You imitate the action.
The other person guesses.
“Scissors?”
“Yes! Scissors.”
The conversation continues.
Your vocabulary had a temporary gap, but communication did not stop.
This is one of the interesting things about language: meaning does not live exclusively inside words.
We use voice, rhythm, facial expression, eye contact, movement and context to help another person understand us.
What does this mean for language learning?
A language classroom can make use of the same connection.
Imagine learning:
open
close
up
down
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A teacher could translate each word.
Or the teacher could say the word while performing the action.
Now the learner has more than a translation to remember.
The new word has been connected with movement, context and meaning.
Gestures can also support conversation when learners do not yet have all the vocabulary they need.
This matters because communication does not have to wait until your language is perfect.
If you can describe, point, demonstrate, ask a question or find another way to express the idea, you can remain part of the conversation.
Sometimes the most useful language-learning skill is not knowing every word.
It is knowing how to continue when you do not.
Is this an ancestral memory?
There is something appealing about calling these behaviours ancestral memories.
A baby points without being formally taught how to have a conversation.
A child uses their body to communicate before they can explain what communication is.
Adults continue gesturing even after language has become effortless.
It can feel as though something very old is appearing in front of us.
But we need to be careful with the word memory.
A baby is not remembering an ancestor pointing at something thousands of years ago. We do not have evidence that specific gestures or languages are stored as inherited memories.
What humans do inherit are biological capacities that develop through interaction with the world and with other people.
Our ability to communicate through gesture may therefore have ancient evolutionary roots without being an ancestral memory in the literal sense.
The distinction makes the idea even more interesting.
We are not remembering an ancient conversation.
We are using a human capacity that may itself be extremely ancient.
Perhaps language begins before the first word
We often celebrate a child's first word.
Mama.
Dada.
Dog.
No.
It feels like the beginning of language.
But perhaps the beginning is harder to locate.
Perhaps it started earlier.
With a baby following someone's gaze.
With an outstretched hand.
With a pointing finger.
With the discovery that looking towards something can make another person look too.
Long before children can construct sentences, they are beginning to understand one of the most extraordinary principles behind human communication:
Something can exist in my mind, and I can help another person understand it.
The words will come later.
Perhaps language does not begin with the first word a child says.
Perhaps it begins with the discovery that another human being can understand what we mean.
What do you think comes first: language, or the desire to be understood?
What if language begins before we ever say a word? Explore how babies use pointing, gestures and shared attention to communicate and what these early behaviours might reveal about the ancient roots of human language.
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