Steven Pinker, author of "The Language Instinct," says that what happened in Nicaraguan children is proof that language acquisition is hardwired inside the human brain. The development of this unique sign language by young children supports Noam Chomsky's postulate that children have an innate ability to produce language, and that they are equipped with the rules of a universal grammar.

It should not surprise one that sign language can arise so relatively easily. Anthropologists claim that before the development of spoken language, early man was already communicating nonverbally. The earliest mention of sign language is by Xenophon in 431 BC. The philosopher Condillac proposed in the mid 18th century that language originated as gestures. It was the Abbé de l'Épée who observed that deaf people roaming the streets of Paris were communicating with one another using an animated system of hand gestures. The abbé established a school for the deaf in 1755, and used his deaf students' natural signs to further their education. This French system of sign language was later to become the foundation of the American Sign Language.

It seems that sign language is closer to the origin of language than speech. Sign language appears to have arisen spontaneously and independently in different parts of the world. For example, Chinese sign language is very different from American, or Danish, or Nicaraguan sign language.

Inventing a brand-new sign language is not easy. Try it yourself. Create a new system of sign language. Pose yourself the following questions. How would you communicate the passage of time? How would you use signs to differentiate between something you have done just a few seconds ago, versus something you did last week? How would you differentiate between an act done by a male or a female, between a young person or an old person, or between people of different races, or between one solitary person versus a large group of people? How would you sign that you have just watched the film "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"? Then tell us what the film is all about. It is like playing the game Charades, except it quickly becomes infinitely more difficult.

Whoever invented sign language must be a true genius!