Language Abilities in Neanderthals

Johansson, Sverker

doi:10.1146/annurev-linguist-030514-124945

Cited by 50 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 161 publications

(142 reference statements)

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“…As Villa and Roebroeks () suggest, there is little in the Neanderthal behavioural package that differs significantly from the African Middle Stone Age (associated with H. sapiens ) where we have no problem accepting a capacity for language for those populations. There have been many arguments regarding the Neanderthal capacity for language that we do not need to reiterate here (but see Johansson, for a useful review). However, recent work has suggested that there would seem to be biological support for the Neanderthal ability for speech from D'Anastasio et al .…”

Section: Updating Neanderthal Behaviourmentioning

confidence: 96%

Aspects of human physical and behavioural evolution during the last 1 million years

Galway‐Witham

Cole

Stringer

2019

J Quaternary Science

107

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This paper reviews some of the main advances in our understanding of human evolution over the last 1 million years, presenting a holistic overview of a field defined by interdisciplinary approaches to studying the origins of our species. We begin by briefly summarizing the climatic context across the Old World for the last 1 million years before directly addressing the fossil and archaeological records. The main themes in this work explore (i) recent discoveries in the fossil record over the last 15 years, such as Homo naledi and Homo floresiensis; (ii) the implications of palaeogenetics for understanding the evolutionary history of, and relationships between, Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo sapiens; (iii) the interplay between physiology and metabolic demand, landscape use, and behavioural adaptations in the evolution of morphological and behavioural innovation; and (iv) recent advances in archaeological understanding for the behavioural record, in particular that of the Neanderthals. This paper seeks to provide a broad‐scale, holistic perspective of our current understanding of human evolution for the last 1 Ma, providing a reference point for researchers that can be built upon as new discoveries continue to develop the landscapes of human evolution. © 2019 The Authors. Journal of Quaternary Science Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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Section: Updating Neanderthal Behaviourmentioning

confidence: 96%

Aspects of human physical and behavioural evolution during the last 1 million years

Galway‐Witham

Cole

Stringer

2019

J Quaternary Science

107

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“…The origin and evolution of language and speech are a heavily debated topic, a major division being between models proposing recent and sudden origin, restricted to modern humans only (Berwick & Chomsky, 2017;Hauser et al, 2014;Klein, 2009), versus deep origin, gradual evolution, and a wider distribution (also including archaic humans, such as the Neanderthals; Dediu & Levinson, 2013, 2018Johansson, 2015;Lieberman, 2016). In particular, the speech capacities of archaic humans have been linked to the position of the larynx (itself linked to the position of the hyoid bone), and the corresponding ratio between the horizontal and the vertical parts of the vocal tract (Lieberman, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of larynx height on vowel production are mitigated by the active control of articulators

Janssen

Moisik

Dediu

2019

Journal of Phonetics

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The influence of larynx position on vowel articulation is an important topic in understanding speech production, the present-day distribution of linguistic diversity and the evolution of speech and language in our lineage. We introduce here a realistic computer model of the vocal tract, constructed from actual human MRI data, which can learn, using machine learning techniques, to control the articulators in such a way as to produce speech sounds matching as closely as possible to a given set of target vowels. We systematically control the vertical position of the larynx and we quantify the differences between the target and produced vowels for each such position across multiple replications. We report that, indeed, larynx height does affect the accuracy of reproducing the target vowels and the distinctness of the produced vowel system, that there is a "sweet spot" of larynx positions that are optimal for vowel production, but that nevertheless, even extreme larynx positions do not result in a collapsed or heavily distorted vowel space that would make speech unintelligible. Together with other lines of evidence, our results support the view that the vowel space of human languages is influenced by our larynx position, but that other positions of the larynx may also be fully compatible with speech.

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“…Over time, environmental changes likely impacted their access to food, and they clearly adapted in order to survive as long as they did. Along the way, Neanderthals developed complex tools (e.g., [5]), likely intentionally buried their dead (e.g., [6]), may have created cave art (e.g., [7]), very likely made ornamentation (e.g., [8]), likely used symbols and very likely had a spoken language [9], and mated with modern humans (e.g., [4]). However, despite what the dietary behaviors of our closest hominin relatives could potentially tell us about our own early history, we found no comprehensive review of the paleoethnobotany of the Neanderthal, and so we gleaned the literature for evidence of their nutritional, medicinal, and ritual uses of plants.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for the Paleoethnobotany of the Neanderthal: A Review of the Literature

Shipley

Kindscher

2016

Scientifica

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Our perception of our closest human relatives, the Neanderthals, has evolved in the last few decades from brutish ape-men to intelligent archaic human peoples. Our understanding and appreciation of their cultural sophistication has only recently extended to their diet. Only within the last few years, with new techniques and a shift in focus, have we begun to truly investigate and understand the role of plants in their diet and culture. The more we learn about Neanderthals, the more we realize that biological and cultural distinctions between them and us were relatively small. Given that we coexisted and likely interacted with them for thousands of years, the more we learn about them, the better we may understand our own past. In that light, we review the current evidence, derived from such sources as plant remains (e.g., starch, pollen, phytoliths, and seeds) in soil and dental calculus, dental and tool wear, coprolites, and genetics, for Neanderthal's nutritional, medicinal, and ritual use of plants, which includes 61 different taxa from 26 different plant families found at 17 different archaeological sites. Further, we updated and standardized botanical nomenclature from many sources published over many decades to provide a more stable foundation for future work.

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Language Abilities in Neanderthals

Cited by 50 publications

References 161 publications

Aspects of human physical and behavioural evolution during the last 1 million years

Aspects of human physical and behavioural evolution during the last 1 million years

The effects of larynx height on vowel production are mitigated by the active control of articulators

Evidence for the Paleoethnobotany of the Neanderthal: A Review of the Literature

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