ZAP // Erich Ferdinand / Flickr
Homo Neanderthalensis, the man of Neanderthal
We believed they would have a terrifying voice. However, our ancestors for hundreds of thousands of years could speak similarly to what we do now.
Vocal trainer Patsy Rodenburg worked with a 3D model of the vocal tract of a Neanderthal, Reproducing in a program they saw a sound that resembles a shrill grunt.
Anyone who watched the program in the early 2000s may have had a terrifying idea of how our ancestors sounded. However, new research and recent studies point out that it may not be quite how our ancestors communicated.
In 2021, anthropologists created Digital reconstructions of skull bones Neanderthal and found that they were able to perceive, as well as produce, speaks, tells.
Neanderthals existed between approximately 400,000 and 40,000 years ago. The emergence of complex giving is debatable: there are scientists who believe it has existed since 50,000 years and others that point to over 2 million years.
“Neanderthals almost certainly spoke languages quite similar to ours, but apparently less structurally complex and less flexible Functionally, ”wrote Antonio Benítez-Burraco, a linguist at the University of Seville, in a pre-publication article that was not subject to peer review.
“At least, it can be speculated that the languages of the Neanderthals could have presented a less complex syntaxa small number of functional categories (such as determinants or conjunctions) and less distinctive sounds, ”he added.
Scientists believe it is likely that Neanderthals had a similar ability to produce human speech – quite different from the grunts we attributed to them.
