Brain Re-Mapping

How is it that the mind of man (though the best word here, is brain - but most people seem to prefer the phrase "mind of man") is so easily mapped by words? It can read a detailed account of someone's travels to a faraway place to which they have never been, and after a little "quiet time", it will almost literally believe that it has been there, knows the scenery, knows and understands the place. And, that's not entirely incorrect. It HAS partially been there, by virtue of the re-mapping of the brain via words.

The same is true when it hears about higher possibilities, higher powers. 
After hearing and reading and talking and thinking about such powers, 
it will now think it understands them, possesses them, and can DO THEM.

Perhaps, that is the way language was able to develop at all, in the beginning. Non-human brains do not have to ability to be so re-mapped. They are closed systems, and open-ended expansion of the highest parts of their cortex is apparently impossible, except to the little degree necessary to become a fully functioning creature of their own species. Birdies learn to sing the songs of their parents, cats learn to kill for food, etc.

Some human, somewhere, somewhen, must have uttered some sounds, heard by others in his small-ish group, and "meaning" was transferred from the one uttering to the other(s) hearing by virtue of other "supporting" sounds, that served to "flesh out" the first utterance(s). The sounds, by themselves, are literally meaningless, just mouth noises - incomprehensible to ALL - but in the mind of the first guy to utter it, it "means" something, and he was able to transfer some portion of that "meaning" to his listeners. He, in effect, was re-mapping their brains, in the same way a farmer maps (and re-maps when necessary) territory around his "property", and fences in certain areas. Then he applies a name to those fenced-in areas - a designation, a signpost, a "Name" - to each of those areas ("south-40", "north-20", "horse-corral 1", "pig-pen 3", "chicken-coop 2", "main barn", "my house", "farm-hand quarters"). After a few years, decades, centuries of such neural re-mapping, and voilà, you've got an up-and-running-on-overdrive "civilization" brewing.