I do not believe language began in the hands for a simpler reason than I'm seeing in the rest of the comments here. Here's my armchair philosophy: How do you b

I do not believe language began in the hands for a simpler reason than I'm seeing in the rest of the comments here. Here's my armchair philosophy: How do you begin a conversation? You first have to get the other person's attention. You can't get someone's attention with sign language if they are not looking at you. Necessity breeds invention, and the ultimate necessity is survival. If a chimp sees a pack of hyenas coming, she doesn't walk in front of each chimp in her clan and point to the hyenas. Instead she makes some kind of guttural yell to make the clan aware of the danger. The clan then looks at her, and then utilizes body language of her eye tracking or pointing. The most dangerous situations in nature are when one is not aware of a threat because one cannot see it, and vocalization can solve that in ways sign language cannot. This behavior (vocalization used before signing) is exhibited in most social mammals. Assuming we evolved from primates, I'm betting it's likely vocalizations were already an established form of communication before humans as we know them began coming up with more advanced signs, but by that point we likely had more advanced vocalizations as well. Since vocalizations have a better SYN/ACK methodology, it was the easier and more effective form of communication throughout our entire history.