Successful tsiattistaes (poet-singers) exhibit ready wit, deep familiarity with poetic and musical traditions, a richvocabulary and an active imagination.
Poets have a ready wit, richvocabulary and active imagination and are able to respond to an opponent by improvising new couplets on specific themes within very strict time constraints.
And though paleoanthropologists are coming around to the view that Neanderthals developed sophisticated ways to communicate, including some form of spoken language, they may have lacked the richvocabulary or symbolic structure we take for granted today.