Like the elements, cells, common senses, eyes, and brain before, words are a gift we’re meant to keep. Sure, it can be stored away unopened, but that is not what gifts are for.
Especially considering words are the only difference between them and us.
What about the other candidates?
To believe what makes us unique is the upright walk, disposable thumb, naked skin, Cambrian explosion, aliens, or the size of our brains would be forgetting they are words.
Wisdom and all that jazz?
To believe wisdom, creativity, intelligence, brains, choices, decisions, organizations, knowledge, and response-ability are what separates us from the wordless would be forgetting if the wordless were lacking creativity, each cloud would be identical, all nuts would be hazel, all birds would be swans, and we wouldn’t be here. After all, we are the wordless’ idea, not our own.
If acorns didn’t know what they want, there’d be no oak trees.
Technology?
Sure, the wordless don’t have self-driving cars, house-cleaning robots, atomic bombs, license-plate flippers, and social media. Why they stubbornly continue without is a mystery. Maybe they don’t see the point. They have invented us, surely they could have invented an atom bomb. Be it as it may, the wordless didn’t wait for us to get started with space travel, for that is how the elements got here. And they know all about the weather, for they are the weather, and Wi-Fi isn’t needed, it seems, because they haven’t bothered with wires in the first place
In common
100% of what we are—cells and water, fire, air, and earth—we have in common with the wordless.
Words are the difference. We can talk about it.
Words describe the world perfectly
How often is that true?
To believe words describe anything, let alone the world, let alone perfectly, is to believe in an optical illusion.
To describe anything takes a scribe. And like every scribe before, it will find words only describe other words, poorly, and that the above ant, butterfly, cat, and dog, both depicted and described, are merely examples.
Our ancestor
If the first to speak the first word on Earth was an animal, as opposed to a plant, fictional character, or mountain, it is safe to conclude it is our ancestor and we are its children.
400 generations later, just like our ancestor did 10,000-plus years ago, we still arrive into this world wordless, and like our ancestor, it still takes us a while to speak our first.
Simplify
The great thing about words being the only difference between us and the rest of Earth is you can simplify your world without having to wait for the world to change first.