Does this recent theory mean that words have actual meaning?

The discovery of mirror neurons has shown us that watching another perform a task makes your brain at times react as if you were doing it. Jeremy Rifkin and others have put forward theories that this is evidence that we are, at heart, an empathic civilization.

Part of the theory is that language is actually a product of an evolutionary disposition toward empathy. Basically, the sensation of actually feeling what a person is doing has led to, eventually, a vocal expression of it.

I’ve always felt that language is, essentially arbitrary. What are the implications of this for language? Does it mean that some words actually have a universal meaning?