The notion that our ancestors could only communicate by beating their chests and grunting is false, according to scientists who have studied how Neanderthals talked to each other. The ear structures in Neanderthal skulls revealed that our ancestors could hear wavelengths related with human language. Maybe they couldn’t speak our current language, but they probably had a language of their own:
“The study of audition in fossil hominids is of great interest given its relationship with intraspecific vocal communication…[but] less is known about the hearing abilities of the Neanderthals,” said a multidisciplinary team of researchers who were able to prove that what may seem like as a brute prototype of a human being was smarter than most of us might have thought. Their study was recently published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Neanderthals or Homo neanderthalensis are our closest predecessors. They are thought to have died out because they could not adapt to chasing smaller, swifter prey with their spears and growing vegetables after the megafauna (such as mammoths and woolly rhinos) they hunted died out. Some argue that because Neanderthals interbred with modern humans, they are not technically extinct because their bloodline never really died out. Many of us have a small percentage of Neanderthal blood running through our veins and don’t even know it.
Image via Syfy
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