This debate is really quite a toss up. There haven't been any conclusive evidence to say whether Neanderthals were able to speak the way Homo sapiens could but since there were studies that showed they interbred, maybe it was possible that they communicated with each other albeit not in the way we expect.
Discover Magazine's Bridget Alex writes:
Part of the reason scientists disagree about Neanderthal language is because there are different definitions of language itself. Without straying too far into academic debates over the nature of language, let’s just say there are broad and narrow theories when it comes to what actually constitutes language.
Speech and language are mostly soft-tissue operations, requiring organs like the tongue, diaphragm and brain that rarely preserve. However, producing and hearing speech influences some enduring aspects of our skeletons too, including the hyoid bone, ear ossicles and the portion of the spinal canal that holds nerves involved in precisely controlling breathing. Studies have found these features are very similar between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, but more primitive and ape-like in earlier hominins like Australopiths.
The question of Neanderthal language remains an open debate. If they lacked it, language may be unique to Homo sapiens. If they had it, language was likely present at least since Neanderthals and modern humans shared a common ancestor, over 500,000 years ago.
So which team are you on?
(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)
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Quoting one web site, after the tests started at the Nevada Test Site: "Almost overnight, Las Vegas ushered in the age of atomic tourism. Fueled by a series of press releases from the Chamber of Commerce, visitors from around the country descended on the city in droves to witness the mushroom clouds first hand. On April 22, 1952, 200 members of the media were invited to broadcast from Yucca Lake, just ten miles from the epicenter of a major blast. As the bomb exploded on televisions from coast to coast, the country was caught up in atomic fever."
Quoting another site: In the summer of 1957, an article in the New York Times explained how to plan one's summer vacation around the "non-ancient but none the less honorable pastime of atom-bomb watching." Reporter Gladwin Hill wrote that "for the first time, the Atomic Energy Commission's Nevada test program will extend through the summer tourist season, into November. It will be the most extensive test series ever held, with upward of fifteen detonations. And for the first time, the A.E.C. has released a partial schedule, so that tourists interested in seeing a nuclear explosion can adjust itineraries accordingly."
Sure, it was shared on slides and postcards instead of Twitter, and broadcast on network TV instead of sent through Facebook, but it's hard to imagine how there would be "new levels of desensitization." People expected nuclear powered cars and airplanes and rockets, and new ports created by detonating nuclear bombs. Quoting Wikipedia: "Nuclear power was seen to be the epitome of progress and modernity."
The fake pictures, as whitcwa succinctly says, pale in comparison to what actually happened.