Here , the most meta of enquiry in the end get their due .
1. Who invented FAQs?
The Frequently Asked Questions data formatting has existed for a while , just not by that name . ( The Four Questions of Passover have been in the Talmud since around the quaternary hundred . ) Today ’s popular FAQ format actually start at NASA . In 1983 , Eugene Miya was tired of seeing the same previous questions stupefy by new members of a pre – World all-inclusive WWW newsgroup . The unreasonable interrogative took up outer space on the mailing list ’s server and flooded user ’ inboxes . To correct it , Miya started post a monthly Frequently Asked Questions list to the grouping , and thus , the FAQ was born .
2. Who asked the first question?
Believe it or not , someone ’s take a crack at answering this : Joseph Jordania , an Australian - Georgian ethnomusicologist and the author ofWho Asked the First Question ? The Origins of Human Choral Singing , Intelligence , Language and Speech . He proposes that the first interrogative sentence was asked by the first human being , because — as he explains it — the power to demand a interrogative sentence was a critical evolutionary leap in distinguishing hominids from their ancestors . So we ca n’t say who , exactly , but that individual nonplus credit for kick off the entire human species .
3. Do other species ask questions?
anthropoid have understood and answered questions humans have necessitate in studies , but despite their sense of curiosity , they do n’t ask question themselves . “ chimp in the wild have vocalization that has elements of wonder behaviour , ” Jordania writes . But by from call - and - response dynamics , inquiring is distinctly human .
4. Who came up with the question mark?
Linguists generally accredit British scholarly person Alcuin of York with the first interrogative mark , which was a tilde over a Roman superman that was meant to help with reading inflection . But in 2011 , Cambridge researcher and manuscript expert Chip Coakley notice the early documented instance of a enquiry - indicate mark . The symbolisation , bang as a “ zagwa elaya”—which looks like a colon — was in a fifth - century Syriac textbook come after what was clearly a question .
