Hand gestures that last longer than spoken languages

Another example of a meaning that has various gestures is pointing. Nick Enfield, a professor of linguistic anthropology from the University of Sydney, suggests that pointing was a precursor to language itself, essential to early human communication. But pointing is not the same in every culture. In parts of the Americas, Africa, southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania, pointing with the head, nose or lips is common. Cooperrider suggests that those cultures might value discretion when, for example, hunting. It is important to be able to subtly communicate the direction of a target without raising attention.

So, if something as universal as approval, disapproval and pointing can be different across cultures, is there anything that has the same meaning to everyone? And would those gestures stand the test of time?

"People everywhere seem to like to gesture about time, they like to locate tomorrow in one position and yesterday in another position, where exactly they locate them might vary by culture," says Cooperrider. For English speakers, time moves from left to right and we tend to gesture about things in the future in front of our bodies and things in the past over our shoulders, he says.

Both Gawne and Cooperrider say that the "palm-up shrug" appears to be very common, though its origins are not certain. Leonardo da Vinci wrote about and painted the gesture in the 15th Century (three of the attendees in The Last Supper appear to be shrugging). But Cooperrider has also studied modern cultures, from Arabic to Zulu, in which the gesture seems to translate.

Gestures that communicate a specific meaning, like "I don't know" or "everything is OK", are called emblematic gestures. "If you look across cultures, these emblematic gestures are used for interpersonal control," says Cooperrider. "They're not used to describe objects. You might imagine that people will have a gesture for water, meat, for running and so on. But that's not the case. These gestures are primarily about trying to manipulate the social world, to get people to stop doing what they're doing or to respond to questions."

So, while there might be subtle differences, there are some basic meanings that most cultures seem to communicate with their hands and bodies. Cornelia Müller, a professor of linguistics from European University Viadrina Frankfurt, suggests that the basic building blocks of gesture can be broken down further. She describes four types of hand gestures: ones that mould, draw, act and represent.

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