Follow
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.
3D model and virtual reconstruction of the ear in a modern human (left) and the Amud 1 Neandertal (right). Credit: Mercedes Conde-Valverde Read Time:
Neanderthals â the closest ancestor to modern humans â possessed the ability to perceive and produce human speech, according to a new study published by an international multidisciplinary team of researchers including Binghamton University Associate Professor of Anthropology Rolf Quam and graduate student Alex Velez.
âThis is one of the most important studies I have been involved in during my career,â said Quam. âThe results are solid and clearly show the Neanderthals had the capacity to perceive and produce human speech. This is one of the very few current, ongoing research lines relying on fossil evidence to study the evolution of language, a notoriously tricky subject in anthropology.â
Neandertals had the capacity to perceive and produce human speech scienceblog.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from scienceblog.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Neandertals the closest ancestor to modern humans possessed the ability to perceive and produce human speech, according to a new study published by an international multidisciplinary team of researchers including Binghamton University anthropology professor Rolf Quam and graduate student Alex Velez.