We can talk, which in and of itself amazing. It is often viewed as one of the reasons, or perhaps manifestations, of why humans are considered the dominant species on the planet. Unfortunately, there is little we can do to accurately document the history of language; history has proven, time and again, that the spoken word always predates the written, and the fossil record has little in the way of evidence for the beginnings of linguistics. Due to this, all one can try to do is to speculate on how or why language began, and how it evolved to what it is today. Within this paper, we will discuss the more popular or plausible theories, explore what may have caused humans to begin to speak, why we continue to speak and the evolution of different forms of language across cultures. With luck, we may stumble upon a theory that is close to correct, if nothing else. From the Phoenicians to the Greeks to modern day America, we will find how we grew this peculiar habit and how it has shaped who and what we are today. Scientists still don't know when and how we began using language but we do know that humans have evolved a brain with a special knack for language. This knack for language has made the human species superior over all others. Since there is no fossil record of when it first appeared, scientists can only speculate theories of when language first debuted. There are several competing hypotheses about this extraordinary ability that our species possesses. One idea is that humans were signing before they were speaking. David Armstrong, who spent decades studying the origin of language before he retired from Gallaudet University, a university for the deaf and hard of hearing, says he thinks gestures involving the hands may have been the earliest form of complex human communication. "Evidence from fossils support that idea. It shows that a modern hand capable of sign language evolved not long after our ape-like ancestors stopped walking on their knuckles a few million years ago. And the modern version of a gene called FOXP2, which is important for speech and language, didn't appear until perhaps 100,000 years ago," says Armstrong. [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor