Eu aceno, tu grunhes, ele traceja: a linguagem e o tempo.

This article aims to understand how the elements that constitute the language have been perceived and studied throughout human history, in the light of a bibliographical study. To do so, we start from classi-cal Greek philosophy until the emergence of linguistics in the 19th and 20th centuries. The development of language, using as a starting point the use of image, represented by the cave paintings produced in prehistory, where the first humans recorded their daily lives, until the appearance of cuneiform writing and its transfor-mations, which enabled the emergence of the alphabet as we know it today. The human being, since its gene-sis, has sought ways to understand and to be understood. This made it possible for communication to reach different stages, based on different techniques, but with the common goal of perpetuating its achievements, narrating the hardships of its trajectory, and demarcating the establishment of societies and civilization.