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.