Around the embers of an ancient fire, something unprecedented may have stirred in the human mind. Researchers at the University of St Andrews propose that firelight's peculiar physical properties — its absence of sleep-disrupting blue light, its flickering rhythm that synchronizes neural activity — carved out a niche in the evening hours where storytelling, and with it language itself, could take root. The theory reframes language not as a tool forged for survival, but as an art born from the quiet hours when survival could, for once, wait.