Nuts and Bolts: fictive language.

 People often say that the crucial difference between Homo sapiens and other animals is that people have language.

It's not true, of course, because many other animals use language of one kind or another, from the waggle dance of hive-living bees to the scent marking of otters, and on to other methods of communication we can hardly imagine.

Similar distinctions between humans and other animals have been made concerning the kind of language called fictive.

Human language is said to be fictive because you can use it to communicate ideas about things which don't exist.

Now, the idea of fictive language is a bit murky at the edges, but the claim is that humans can cooperate in really big groups because of a joint acceptance of the idea of God, the law, or aliens with a taste for making friends with weirdos. Stuff like that.

Animals can cooperate in large numbers (termite mounds, for instance, can have a population in the millions) but this is achieved through instinct and some limited communication, in the case of termites using touch and vibration. A group of chimpanzees can only organise a group of a few dozen at most.

Now, whether being able to share a belief in something like Justice as administered by the United Nations is the most vital part of the formation of a human society, I do not know. 

And the claim that societies of other animals have no concept of, or means of expressing a desire for, justice is equally open to argument.

But still, it's an interesting idea, isn't it.

Word To Use Today: fictive. Fictive mean able to create fiction. The Latin fictiō means a fashioning, from fingere, to shape.