Once again: Did Neanderthals speak?

Some enterprising researchers actually looked into this: in considerable detail and find that they did have the anatomical properties to enable speech:

“The Neanderthal voice box is a lot bigger than ours,” says Martelli. The voice box, or larynx, is essentially the echo chamber within which the voice resonates. A bigger, differently shaped echo chamber affects the phonetic quality of the sounds that come out of it. “We can get the model to produce a very convincing ‘oo’ and ‘ee’ sound, but the ‘ah’ comes out quite different.” The Neanderthal “ah,” it seems, would have been closer to “uh” or a combination of “ah” and “uh” that is difficult for us modern humans to render phonetically. (Readers in the United States should be able to watch a video here). Anna Goldfield, “The Neanderthal Throat—Did Neanderthals Speak?” at Sapiens

At the Sapiens site, Goldfield offers some sound files that might represent Neanderthal vs, current vocalization.

See also: Can we talk? Language as the business end of consciousness

and

Neanderthal Man: The long-lost relative turns up again, this time with documents

Follow UD News at Twitter!

Copyright © 2019 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana