When people do hand gestures, are those hand gestures thousands of years old?

Pay no attention to the fella behind the "Dude!" This is NOT a simple common sense question. That this situation exists is common sense, but that's not the question! His question is relative to the overall correlation between spontaneous hand gestures without significant social precedent...like the upraised finger responses the last answer might elicit!

This isn't much different than the 100 monkeys bangin' on a typewriter indefinitely would probably come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. It's certainly not a deeply metaphysical question, but neither is it deserving of scorn out of hand!

However, it doesn't lend itself to easy answer either; perhaps it's that frustration that's showin' in that last reply! LOL

(Sorry...just pickin'!) heh heh

Some may be, but as Rayven56 says, you can't rely on common sense.

Some body language you can be confident is very old - biological even - because you see it is is spontaneous: for instance, smiling, which even totally blind children do.

With gestures, it's a matter of observation that there are quite wide variations in the gestures and in their meaning between different cultures, which can cause major cultural misunderstandings. See, for instance, A Guide to Greek facial and hand gestures ( http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/211730... ) - with the particular point that a backward head nod means "no", and head shaking means "I don't understand the question".

With such a cultural overlay, I don't think you could confidently assume they go very far back.

Basically yes, and many are rooted in history. Shaking hands was to show that you carried no weapon in that hand, as an example. As for cave drawings - yes of course things were described by hand or body positions, gestures etc. That was the only way. Remember that we think in pictures, not in words, so it is logical and natural to describe things in pictures. To use your example of an explosion - you are using your hands to present a visulatisation of the thing going off like an atomic explosion.

In short - to answer your question - the answer is yes. I am now sticking my thumb in the air and nodding my head.

As widespread, your poem fills me with peace, and likewise a mushy tug on the middle strings whilst i think of of people who've long previous before. much greater so in being reminded of people who're on the breaking point of going living house. rejoice for them, however the soreness of loss is inevitable for those people left in the back of.

Dude, that's common sense. When you don't have language or are bad at language (I'm looking at you), words aren't enough and our hands become tools to help convey our thoughts to an audience. Body language is an important communications tool.

i think Anthony is right.