Neanderthal Talk

Posted by Miss Cellania in Science & Tech on April 17, 2008 at 11:14 am


150_neanderthalScientists have recreated what they believe to be the voice of Neanderthals.

Robert McCarthy, an anthropologist at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton has used new reconstructions of Neanderthal vocal tracts to simulate the voice. He says the ancient human’s speech lacked the “quantal vowel” sounds that underlie modern speech.

Quantal vowels provide cues that help speakers with different size vocal tracts understand one another, says McCarthy, who was talking at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Columbus, Ohio, on April 11.

“They would have spoken a bit differently. They wouldn’t have been able to produce these quantal vowels that form the basis of spoken language,” he says.

New Scientist has very short audio clips contrasting the Neanderthal and modern human speech. Link -via Yahoo News

(image credit: Anthropological Institute, University of Zürich)


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15 comments to "Neanderthal Talk"

  1. Evilbeagle
    April 17th, 2008 at 11:21 am

    The clip doesn't sound like much, but this sort of technology is fascinating, and the better it gets, the cooler it will be. I will be more impressed in about a decade when the technology is improved.

  2. Hirudin
    April 17th, 2008 at 11:23 am

    Um... am I missing something? I skipped the article and went straight to the sound file. After listening to the... um... simulated voice I lost interest immediately.

    Are they actually proud of that quarter-second blip?

  3. jack.wh
    April 17th, 2008 at 11:37 am

    Personally, I thought that was a bit pointless. "Uh". What a caveman noise!

  4. tabest
    April 17th, 2008 at 11:45 am

    well they have to start somewhere.

  5. Lasse
    April 17th, 2008 at 12:17 pm

    Ah, neanderthals. First intelligent species fucked over by Homo Sapiens. Who will be next?

  6. MrsBug
    April 17th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

    Did anybody see all the hate and discontent in the comments at the link? Dang, that sure pulled them out of the woodwork!

  7. Tim Giachetti
    April 17th, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    Great find Missy. You always find the neat stuff.

  8. CheeseDuck
    April 17th, 2008 at 2:47 pm

    That's pretty high pitched. I always assumed that they would be lower.

  9. Gerry
    April 17th, 2008 at 3:06 pm

    Having grown up in Columbus, Ohio.... I just can't hold myself in at the number of jokes available for a conference studying Neanderthals being held in Columbus.....

    (snicker)

  10. Lemons
    April 17th, 2008 at 7:55 pm

    *I* think it's pretty cool, at least, to see how a different vocal tract would necessarily require a different distribution of language sounds...but then, I'm a Ling major for a reason.

  11. Louisa
    April 17th, 2008 at 9:46 pm

    The comments following the article are more entertaining than the initial discussion.
    Just read them and have the nerve to consider our species superior. lol

  12. ted
    April 17th, 2008 at 10:58 pm

    Mere conjecture. The comments there are hi-larious.

  13. Greg
    April 18th, 2008 at 10:18 am

    Isn't our species superior to Neanderthals? Last time I checked, they died out, we are still here and most evidence points to the fact that we didn't kill them, they died of their own accord. Some claim Neanderthals are smarter because of their larger brains, but modern humans have smaller brains than our ancestors and tests indicate that our intelligence goes up with every generation.

  14. Jimbo
    April 18th, 2008 at 2:30 pm

    FAKE

  15. Chris Johnston
    April 20th, 2008 at 6:03 am

    This was covered quite nicely by the SF writer Robert J. Sawyer in his novel "Hominids", about a quantum physicist from a parallel universe where Neanderthals became dominant who falls into our universe.
    He couldn't pronounce the 'ee' phoneme, so he had to refer to the character Mary as "Mare".


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