They were bigger than us, stronger, could run faster and you wouldn’t want to have met one on a dark night.
So why did our ancient cousin and competitor for domination of the prehistoric world, homo erectus, die out while we of the homo sapiens tribe inherited the earth?
Well it was nothing to do with being meek, though that might have been a wise tactic when faced with an angry erectus.
Homo erectus: A man who knows how to get to the
point but not the idea! Picture: Gerbil
And it wasn’t even because of the sapiens thing either, although we did have brains about a third bigger than homo E.
It all comes down to communication. Homo sapiens was much better not only at coming up with ideas, but crucially at passing them on to others.
As John Shea, Professor of palaeoanthropology at Stony Brook University, New York, pointed out, homo erectus didn’t have a brain with a highly developed capacity to control language and speech.
“One of the crucial elements in homo sapiens’s adaptations is that it combines complex planning, developed in the front of the brain, with language and the ability to spread new ideas from one individual to another,” said Prof Shea.
So if you have developed the better spear, bow and arrow or nuclear bomb, there’s no point keeping it to yourself if you want the tribe to survive.
Our skin-clad forebears got out there and communicated – and they cleaned up.
Funny how things don’t really change in 100,000 years. Because if you want to get ahead, be a great communicator.
What price words? Well, a very high one if you get them wrong.
Too often the quality of content that companies and individuals shower on an unsuspecting and overburdened audience is badly written, ungrammatical, mis-spelt and just a complete waste of everyone’s time.
And too many organisations think that they can just get away with it. Wrong.
An analysis of website data by a leading online expert shows that even just a simple mis-spelt word can cut online sales IN HALF.
Charles Duncombe of the Just Say Please web group says his survey shows that British companies are losing millions of pounds a week just through poor quality spelling and grammar.
Picture Credit: Noomh, FreeDigitalPhotos
They may sound like old-fashioned skills, but when it comes to credibility, they are vital for any company communicating with outsiders. Communication is 99% of the time by words, so if you get them wrong… fill in the apposite word yourself. But there is another aspect to the maintaining of online and textual credibility.
The fear of fraud and online safety is widespread among web users, and it is vital to get the basics right to maintain confidence in a website. When a reader is worried about spam or phishing crass textual errors in a marketing email, or on a website give exactly the wrong impression and immediately raise suspicions – and a finger over the delete button.
Research shows that a website has a mere six seconds to attract a reader. If the words are wrong, your potential customer will have an extra five seconds to spend somewhere else.
So get it right, and if you are worried about getting it right, get The Words Agency.
Binge poetry was the order of the evening at the launch of Lesley Duncan’s new collection Images Not Icons Poems for our Times. The newspaper poetry editor was on fine form in front of an appreciative audience in the Boardroom of the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh regaling them with anecdotes from a compendium of experience in the Scottish press.
And she brought a round of laughter with the story of one mission she was sent on: a voyage of Scottish literary enthusiasts invited to Russia for a conference in the days before the Berlin Wall came down.
There were glimmers of Glasnost, though, as the invited party departed Leith Roads by rather ancient steamer bound for what was then still the Soviet Union.
The Russian hosts were very anxious that the occasion should go with Burnsian gusto and help cement the improving East-West relations. Picture their horror then, when the boat transporting the ambassadors of the word ran out of Vodka before it had even cleared the Firth of Forth.
Even for the absurd alcoholic consumption usual to the Russians, this was a totally unexpected level of toping and led to worries about whether the convivial atmosphere might sour before the boat arrived at its destination.
They needn’t have worried. Having drunk the boat dry, the rest of the voyage was a decidedly sleepy one.
The spirit of Rabbie lives on.
Homo erectus: A man who knows how to get to the 
Picture Credit: Noomh, FreeDigitalPhotos
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