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Neanderthals were capable of human speech
Detailed and long-running research shows that our closest ancestor talked and heard.
3D model and virtual reconstruction of the ear in a modern human (left) and the Amud 1 Neandertal (right). Credit: Mercedes Conde-Valverde.
The closest ancestor to modern humans – Neanderthals – were capable of understanding and producing human speech, according to a new study published by an international team in the journal
Nature Ecology and Evolution.
“This is one of the most important studies I have been involved in during my career,” says anthropologist Rolf Quam, of Binghamton University, US. “The results are solid and clearly show the Neanderthals had the capacity to perceive and produce human speech.
Neanderthals Listened to the World Much Like Us
A reconstructed Neanderthal ear adds a new piece to the puzzle of whether the early humans could speak.
To begin to figure out whether Neanderthals could talk, researchers studied fossilized ear bones, to reconstruct how and what our early ancestors heard.Credit.The Natural History Museum, London/Science Source
By Sabrina Imbler
March 1, 2021
If you were somehow able to travel back in time some 130,000 years and chance upon a Neanderthal, you might find yourself telling them about some of humanity’s greatest inventions, such as spanakopita and TikTok. The Neanderthal would have no idea what you were saying, much less talking about, but they might be able to hear you perfectly, picking up on the voiceless consonants “t,” “k” and “s” that appear in many modern human languages.
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Mar. 2, 2021
To some it’s obvious that Neanderthals had language. To sustain and convey their cultural sophistication, they had to be able to speak, goes the argument. Now a new multidisciplinary approach, based on fossil evidence and modeling, claims to have categorically proven that they did.
Homo sapiens ancestors, for instance. Neanderthals manufactured glue from birch tar to firmly attach spearheads to shafts, and how would they teach that down the generations, by grunting? Some even argue that the roots of language may lie a million years in the past, well before
Homo sapiens began to evolve, based on similar arguments – cultural sophistication that would be challenging to pass down the generations without speaking.