# Neanderthal's Language



## Rosemary (Oct 19, 2007)

Chatty Cave Men? Me Neanderthal, Talk Just Fine - Yahoo! News

  Neanderthals might have spoken just like humans do now, new genetic findings suggest.


  Neanderthals are humanity's closest extinct relatives. Since their discovery more than 150 years ago, researchers have found out they could make tools just like our ancestors could, but whether Neanderthals also had advanced language, rather than mere grunts and groans, has remained hotly debated.
  It is possible that Neanderthals spoke just like we do," paleogeneticist Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told LiveScience.

_This sounds really interesting and I hope they put out more on this subject._


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## Sephiroth (Oct 20, 2007)

Me too.  It has fascinating implications for our understanding of the long period of co-existence.


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## clovis-man (Oct 25, 2007)

I often find that media in general and many "pop anthropologists" in particular have a habit of underestimating primitive man's abilities. I think it is more than a little egocentric, to say the least, to insist that hominids who were contemporaries of early cro-magnons all just grunted. I think they've seen "Quest for Fire" a few too many times.

I like the Gary Larson primitive quote better: "Oog make Mission Statement!" It's a major irony to think that the portrayal of characters in "Cavemen" may be more accurate than news media speculations.


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## Ranwulf (Apr 27, 2008)

I heard that Neanderthals went extinct but 40,000 years ago. Did homo-sapiens have language back then? If so, I'd imagine Neanderthals did too.


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## The Ace (Apr 27, 2008)

That's the biggie, Ranwulf, the theory is that we replaced them, (war or simple competition, no-one's really sure).  

It's the general belief that we've always  had basic language skills which developed along with society.

The Neanderthals' ability to speak, far less vocalise abstract concepts, is  one of the most hotly-debated issues in human history.


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## Wybren (May 4, 2008)

If I have done my research for uni correctly we did have language 40,000 years ago. Modern _Homo sapien_ (_Homo sapien sapien) _has been around for roughly 60-70,000 years with Archaic _Homo sapien _turning up in the fossil record about 190,000 years ago. I think it is reasonable to consider that, considering how similar the Neanderthals were to us, and given that they had a larger brain than we do, that they could have had a verbal language like our own. My own hypothesis as to why they died out (not that anyone is asking  ) is that we are better breeders, and we just out breed them and they couldn't compete with us, That or they were abducted by Aliens.


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## The Ace (May 4, 2008)

Of course, while our remote ancestors _were _unsophisticated by modern standards, they were by no means stupid, learning from experience and from their elders the lessons they needed to survive in an environment teeming with predators, natural hazards and that bunch at the other end of the valley.

Had they been truly stupid, we wouldn't exist.


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## Wybren (May 4, 2008)

Neanderthals were probably no more unsophisticated than the Archaic homo sapiens of our linage, they had tools and material goods and buried their dead, so IMHO it probably just comes down to who was the most prolific breeder.

Yes truly stupid individuals usually don't make it to pass on their genes.


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## clovis-man (May 4, 2008)

Words of wisdom from ironictimes.com:

*Anthropologists Synthesize Neanderthal's Voice
*Similar to human's, but can't pronounce "nuclear."


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## Delvo (May 4, 2008)

Wybren said:


> Neanderthals were probably no more unsophisticated than the Archaic homo sapiens of our linage, they had tools and material goods and buried their dead


But archaic HS was not as sophisticated as modern HS; that's why there's a distinction. There was a relatively sudden proliferation of different new tool types and expansion in geographic range (accompanied by a slight final increase in brain size). Those things hadn't happened in our line before and didn't happen in the Neanderthals' line at all. (Some more varied sapiens-like tools and artworks are thought to have been associated with Neanderthals, but only after sapiens arrived in Europe, and often cruder and without any signs of having been developed there or still being under development anymore, which suggests imitation at most, rather than innovation.)


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## Faraday (May 23, 2009)

Neanderthals are the result of the first wave of "human like" people to come out of Africa to settle in what is now Europe and Russia (i think Russia bit rusty on that bit) who eventually evolved into Neanderthals. However some of that first wave stayed in Africa and developed into what we are now, and eventually moved out and first settled in the fertile cresent and later moved into Neanderthal territory.

They believe that we existed side by side for a period of time until the Neanderthals started to die off, which to me is sad. Many theories abound as to the why, but the most agreed on is that we were superior in every way, we were better hunters, better breeders, although there is a theory that we may have interbred with them, but theres no proof of that, well none thats been found in our DNA anyway, and another is that we brought diseases with us and they didnt have an immune system that could cope with it. And the fact that our brains were bigger so we were able to develop new ways of hunting etc

As to speech, all mammals have been able to communicate in some way, why not Neanderthals too?

Thats based on information that I have learned over the past year and my memory is shocking so i could be a bit fuzzy on a few areas. This is a subject that I am most interested in atm and read anything I can on it


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## Pyan (May 23, 2009)

Faraday said:


> As to speech, all mammals have been able to communicate in some way, why not Neanderthals too?



There is a difference between communication and true speech, though - _Homo Sapiens _can talk as we know the term because of the unique evolution of the soft palate to divide the air-passages and the food-passage, something no other animal has. If _Homo Neanderthalis_ had this as well, there's no reason at all why they shouldn't be able to articulate proper words.


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## Interference (May 23, 2009)

Disclaimer:  I know nothing.

But language would seem to me to develop out of the ability to differentiate between different sounds.  If Neanderthal were imitative (art and tools as suggested above) they might do their best to imitate the sounds Homo Sapiens were making, which at that time need not have been particulary sophisticated like wha' we are currently like, and I'm pretty sure that, even were one to be without a soft palate, two species could make sounds to each other that would be recognisable as dialogue if the species in question where inquisitive enough.

Yeah, I can see a scenario where Neanderthal and Homo Sapien could have a chat over dinner.


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## Esioul (May 23, 2009)

Ug ug?

Perhaps Neanderthals to too much-maligned.


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## Esioul (May 23, 2009)

Although I'm not at all an expert on them, the Iron Age being more my thing


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## clovis-man (May 23, 2009)

pyan said:


> There is a difference between communication and true speech, though - _Homo Sapiens _can talk as we know the term because of the unique evolution of the soft palate to divide the air-passages and the food-passage, something no other animal has. If _Homo Neanderthalis_ had this as well, there's no reason at all why they shouldn't be able to articulate proper words.


 
And nothing in the fossil record suggests otherwise. Moreover, true language was the result of the development of the cerebral cortex to the extent that cognitively, sound could be dissociated from meaning. Without that ability, language is impossible, irrespective of articulatory issues. Again, there is nothing in the evidence we have at hand to suggest that such was not the case with Homo Neanderthalensis.

I guess I'm having trouble seeing what all the controversy is about. besides, I'm pretty sure my last boss was a Neanderthal, even if he did have pointy hair.


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## Dave (May 23, 2009)

Q: What if we were just more violent and murdering?

I apologise now, completely and unreservedly, for everything humans ever did to Neanderthals.


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## HareBrain (May 26, 2009)

I don't think Neanderthals would have buried their dead and decorated the graves unless they had a concept of some kind of space beyond death - and they wouldn't have had that without the language to express it.


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## Interference (May 27, 2009)

If, as was mentioned elsewhere on this thread, the Neanderthals learned painting from HS, then surely that indicates there must have been a shared language between them.

"You've really captured the spirit of the bison, but let me explain again about perspective" may have formed part of one of the planet's earliest inter-species conversations.


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