Wednesday 11 July, 2001
Neanderthal's Gift Of Speech
Neanderthals were once portrayed by scientists as primitive cavemen. These ancient humans, who inhabited Europe 30,000 years ago, were believed to grunt and were considered incapable of creating specialised tools.
In the last three decades, the image of the Neanderthal has undergone a large revision with scientists challenging each other's research on this race's ability to speak.
But now, a group of scientists are no longer asking could they speak?, but rather, how clear was their speech? Science In Action investigates.
Origin Of Speech
There are several theories on when people began to communicate through speech. Some scientists believe the ability to speak arose with the creativity and self-awareness needed to create stone technology over two million years ago. In order to convey tool-making technology, a form of spoken language was needed.
Others believe speech began appearing 40,000 years ago. It is feasible that Homo neanderthalensis, or Neanderthal, discussed the meaning of cave art and other artifacts, such as flutes, through words with their kin.
If this ancient race had vocal capabilities, it would mean that speech evolved earlier than evidence suggests. The stocky and muscular Neanderthals, the survivors of many Ice Ages, had inhabited Europe for 200,000 years.
Material Evidence
While stone technology and cave art constitute material evidence, brain structure and words clearly do not and cannot be analysed in the same way, so how do researchers study ancient speech capabilities?
The answer lies in recreating the computer models of the human vocal tract, which includes the larynx or Adam's apple, the windpipe and the area inside the mouth, neither of which fossilise.
Vocal Tract Anatomies
Franklin Yates, at George Washington University, US, simply assumes that Neanderthals were able to speak and focuses his study on establishing the clarity of their speech.
Because speech is related to vocal tract anatomy, he has created several models of these, based on different species of apes, on his computer.
| 'I estimated what a Neanderthal's vocal tract would look like if it had a human-like vocal tract as well as a chimp-like vocal tract. You can input the basic shapes into a computer programme, which returns the acoustical properties for the vowel “e”.' |
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This vowel is then subjected to tests to establish how clear it sounds.
The Vowel Test
Analysing the sound of vowels is important because they are present in modern human speech. Some studies, such as one headed by linguist Philip Lieberman, in 1992, concluded Neanderthals were unable to pronounce the vowels – “a”, “i”, and “u”, as well as the consonants “k” and “g”. He claimed Neanderthals had a tongue and larynx badly placed for producing the range of sounds necessary for modern language.
Dr Erik Trinkaus, at Washington University, refuted this by contending a species may not have needed the modern range of vowels to produce speech.
In his study, Yates has been testing the “e” vowel on models of chimpanzees, humans and Neanderthals. The results suggest Neanderthals would have had deeper voices than humans.
'Our results depend on how we model the “e” vocal tract for the Neanderthal, because his tract, if it's modelled like a human, is very long, 25% longer than our own, on average.'
| 'Their voices would have been very deep compared to our own. They would have had an entirely different octave range. So if Barry White had sung in a choir of Neanderthals, he would have been the tenor.' |
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If the Neanderthal's vocal tract had been similar to that of chimpanzees, the windpipe would have been shorter. Speech would have been slushy and difficult to understand. Modelled as humans, their voices would have been deep, like a bass.
The Decline of A Species
Settling the question of the Neanderthal's vocal capability, and its efficacy, is important because it would provide at least one reason for explaining why modern humans, or Homo sapiens, came to dominate earth and the Neanderthal population began to decline and eventually became extinct.
A communication skill like speech, and the organisational abilities and diversity it would have spawned, could have given modern humans an advantage over their speech-deficient rivals - the Neanderthals who inhabited the same area of Europe.
A completely different theory proposes that when modern humans dispersed into Europe, in some areas they replaced the resident Neanderthals and in others interbred with them.
In Portugal, the bones of a 24,500-year-old boy show features that belong to both races.
After theorising on how these ancient ancestors pronounced their words, an important question remains a mystery: What did our ancient ancestors actually say?
|  |  | | | In Neander |  |
| | The bones of a Neanderthal were first discovered in 1856.
Workmen seeking limestone, broke into a cave near the town of Neander, in the outskirts of Dusseldorf, Germany, and discovered a skeleton with a skull.
Anthropologists later referred to it as the Neanderthal race.
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| | | | Neanderthals Can Talk |  |
| | In 1998, scientists at Duke University, US, published a controversial report.
Through the analysis of fossil anatomy, they concluded Neanderthals could talk because they had the physical ability to do so.
Two holes on the base of the skull – the hypoglossal canals – house the nerves that control tongue movements.
Neanderthals, they estimated, had hypoglossal canals comparable in size to those of modern humans. The vocal capability depended on size.
A year later, a team from the University of California, Berkeley, challenged this finding.
They concluded the size of the canal is not a reliable indicator of speech.
The team tested 30 non-human primates and found many to have larger canal sizes than those present in modern humans.
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