The Linguistic Relativity hypothesis has a bit to put into this. I'll call it LRH from here on.

Consider the tendency of English (and many European languages) to equate time with money. You spend it, save it, invest it, or waste it. And time information is mandatory in any of our sentences. Turkish requires one to specify if he witnessed something or if it was hearsay. These linguistic conventions practice thought processes that embed themselves in our everyday lives. "The neurons that fire together wire together."

Here's a quotation from a paper I wrote on this a year or so ago: English distinguishes the use of prepositions for containers through “in” and “on,” to put it simply. Korean, however, makes no such distinction, opting instead for prepositions that indicate tight and loose fit. Thus, an apple in a bowl would use a different preposition than a letter in an envelope. The latter is considered to have the same relationship to its container as a magnet on a refrigerator. When shown a group of pictures of tight-fit relationships with one loose-fit relationship and told to find the odd one out, Korean speakers easily chose the loose-fit picture. English speakers found it much more difficult. Additionally, pre-lingual infants raised in bilingual Korean/ English households were able to make tight- and loose-fit distinctions as well as in- and on-container distinctions. By training us to think in certain ways, language effectively limits our understanding of the world, in metaconceptual terms.

Gender attributions for inanimate objects are puzzling to English speakers, but are quite common to speakers of other languages. Groups of Spanish and German speakers were shown pictures of objects which had opposite genders in the two languages, and told to match their resemblances to pictures of people. Predictably, grammatical gender of the object was consistently correlated with the corresponding person's gender. Asked to describe a key (feminine in their language), Spanish speakers called it, “golden, intricate, little, lovely, shiny, and tiny;” German speakers called their masculine version, “hard, heavy, jagged, metal, serrated, and useful.” A bridge was “beautiful, elegant, fragile, peaceful, pretty and slender” to Germans, and “big, dangerous, long, strong, sturdy, and towering” to Spanish-speakers [Boroditsky, 2003].

Language ability is correlated with higher cognitive performance (Jerry Fodor), and its importance over physical adaptations is possibly what triggered the period of our species' explosive brain growth. There is a good chance it is the foundation for most higher thought. The LRH posits that the machinery of the language we grow up with influences our development, and the way our brain works.

When Europeans came to America, they reported that the natives were puzzled at first at the concept that one could "own" land. Some of the languages even lacked ownership language, which made communication of the idea even more difficult. So we can establish that ownership is not a given.

But this brings us to the major confound in the question of the LRH, which you've probably thought of if you read this far: Does language beget mindset, or does mindset beget language? Obviously, this is nearly impossible to establish for sure. If you respect such a thing as a Thought Experiment, run a few, and see where that takes you. Personally, I think humans are adaptive enough that it follows this pattern: In unstable (survival) situations, language TENDS to adapt to mindset. In circumstances of stability, mindset TENDS to adhere to language.

I forgot to mention Newspeak. Perfect example. Sorry.

TL;DR: We're used to thinking of ownership as a given mechanism in life because it's ingrained in the culture and language that forms our mindset. There are cultures without ownership.

well, what else owns it?

when you say "not man", do you mean something that is not a human or something that is not "one man"?

if it's the former, then it's pretty easy to say that ownership (being a state of mind) can easily be given to man. We take what we want and we naturally view everything as ours. so why not make it ours?

technically, ownership doesn't exist. we MADE IT UP so we know how to regulate shit. so ownership, from it's origin in definition, belongs to man.

Ownership, in my understanding, is the idea that a specific individual or group should have or use something. This concept stems from self-ownership, because you must begin with recognizing an individual as the only one with the control to use his/her own body. To deny that people control their own bodies, you must use yours to deny this fact.

I think that "ownership," comes about by the understanding that if a person creates an apple orchard, the apples belong to them. If I work for 8 hours at a restaurant, the paycheck gets sent to me and not somebody else. If I hit someone's car, I have to pay for the damages. This is because we are responsible for our actions and their effects, be them good or bad. This is why we understand that if somebody comes to your house and takes the computer you're using, they are stealing your computer.

Animals can't own things, because they're not responsible for their actions. We recognize that if an alligator chows down on your leg, it wasn't a choice the alligator made. You can't hold the alligator accountable (e.g. you take the owner of a dog to court, if you get bitten by one- not the dog). Animals don't have the ability to consider effects of their actions and compare them to others.

The premise of this debate seems a bit vague.

However, since there's no physical natural law defining ownership, and that it only exists as a social contract between individuals, then it's obviously derived from man/mankind/society.

I'm curious as to what you mean by "not man". God? Rabbits? Toasters? All of the above?

Ownership is an abstract concept, and as such will most definitely have its origins in man. The distinctions between possession and ownership are important in this debate.

I will edit this argument and provide a more detailed argument at a later date (until then, can you avoid voting on this argument).

Anything existent arises through the operation of natural law, and as "ownership" is a language concept, not present in some languages, I think we have to conclude that "ownership" is "realized" by some process of pragmatic analysis of circumstance shaped by natural law. It is my aim to discover these circumstances, identify the natural laws at play in those circumstances, and determine the parameters and operation of "ownership" that are compelled by, and in harmony with, natural law.

In my admittedly cursory examination of extant discussions, I have not seen this approach. Should anyone know of a discussion proceeding on those premises, I would appreciate learning of it.