Could Neanderthals Talk? // 30 Minute Lecture from an Oxford Archaeology Grad

Helloooo good morning & welcome to this surprise video! This video is part 2 of a video that I uploaded on @thestudytubeproject5210 but can also be a stand alone lecture. All references and useful links are in the pinned comment.

*disclaimer: I may have a degree in it but I am not an expert. I have spent many, many hours in classes and reading about this topic but things change and people have different opinions. This video is based on my notes and reading from my degree so if you think any of it is wrong then do let me know but don't be a meanie about it lol*

S O C I A L M E D I A

✽ Snapchat: JustALittle_Roo
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F A Q s
✽ How old are you? 21
✽ What did you study at Oxford? Archaeology and Anthropology
✽ Which Oxford college were you at? St Peter's College
✽ Where will your Master's be? Cranfield University
✽ What is your Master's in? Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology
✽ Where are you from? Greater Manchester
✽ What do you use to film? Canon EOS 200d & Samsung S7 Edge

[RosieCrawford]

Some References:

Aiello, L and Dunbar, R. 1993. Current Anthropology. Vol. 34, No. 2 (Apr., 1993), pp. 184-1933

Arensburg, A. M., Tiller, A. M., Vandermeersch, B., Duday, H., Schepartz, L. A., & Rak, Y. (1989). A Middle Pleistocene human hyoid bone. Nature, 283, 758–760.


Boë et al. 2002. The potential Neandertal vowel space was as large as that of modern humans. J. Phon. 30, 465–484

Boë et al. 2007. The vocal tract of newborn humans and Neanderthals: Acoustic capabilities and consequences for the debate on the origin of language. A reply to Lieberman. Journal of Phonetics 35(4):564-581 · October 2007

Bryant, G. A., & Aptipis, C. A. 2014. The animal nature of spontaneous human laughter. Evolution and Human Behavior, 35, 327–335

Carlisle and Siegel. 1974. Some Problems in the Interpretation of Neanderthal Speech Capabilities: A Reply to Lieberman. American Anthropologist New Series, Vol. 76, No. 2 (Jun., 1974), pp. 319-322

Dunbar, R. 2017. Group size, vocal grooming and the origins of language

Henshilwood CS, d'Errico F, Watts I. 2009. Engraved ochres from the Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa. J Hum Evol. 57(1):27‐47.

Lozano, M et al. 2009. Right handedness of Homo heidelbergensis from Sima de los Huesos (Atapuerca, Spain) 500, 000 years ago. Evolution and Human Behavior - EVOL HUM BEHAV. 30. 369-376.

Lieberman. P. 1968. Primate vocalizations and human linguistic ability. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 44, 1574–1584

Lieberman and Crelin. 1971. On the speech of Neanderthal man. Linguist. Inq. 2, 203–222

Martinez et al. 2015. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Sep 2015, 112 (37) 11524-11529; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1514828112

Morgan et al. 2015 Experimental evidence for the co-evolution of hominin tool-making teaching and language. Nature Communications volume 6, Article number: 6029

Trinkaus and Walker. 2017. The People of Palomas: Neandertals from the Sima de las Palomas del Cabezo Gordo, Southeastern Spain

Walker, M.J. 2009. “Chapter 7. Long–term memory and Middle Pleistocene `Mysterians´, ” pp. 75-84 in S.A.de Beaune, F.L.Coolidge, T.Wynn (eds), Cognitive Archaeology and Human Evolution. Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press. (ISBN 0521746116)


Useful Wesbite:

[BrenoviskxD]

I am a veterinarian student but i always felt in love with archeology, anthropology and paleoanthropology, that is an awesome video and i expect more about this subject !! congratulations and cheers from brazil

[karleybioanthro]

I wrote a paper on the evolution of language for my culture and language course! This is so interesting and I’m glad to see someone in the field talking about it! 😊😊

[sakshi]

This is such a good video. I have always been interested in evolution of speech and if I haven't loved medicine so much I would have definitely taken it up at university. Amazing video, keep up the good work

[studywithanna]

you’re so close to 10k!!! ✨♥️ (also really enjoyed this video!)

[AncientNovelist]

Hi Rosie, This is a nice summary of our current knowledge of Neanderthal language potential. In my own summary ("Under a Purple Sky: The Anthropology of Fire Wolf", a nonfiction essay found at the back of my novel Fire Wolf), I concentrated on the many examples of Neanderthal art as providing strong basis for the valid conclusion that Neanderthals had language. In Fire Wolf itself, however, in Chapter Two, I depict a Neanderthal stone worker's apprentice teaching a stone master how to make birch bark oil (called "birch blood" in the novel). I deliberately chose this highly technical Neanderthal ability to demonstrate the unlikelihood that a process of such extraordinary complexity could have been passed from one person to another without language. One quibble: Levallois is a specific technique giving a specific type of stone tool almost unique to Neanderthals, and is just part of the suite of techniques and tools that form the Mousterian industry. As you seem to have intimated here, I believe the Acheulean industry virtually demands a robust and nuanced language, and so I tend to place early language with early H. erectus, somewhat before the Acheulean. Unrelated to the language discussion, but perhaps of interest to an archaeologist, I enjoy poking fellow scientists a bit. The opening scene of Fire Wolf depicts what I consider a reasonable explanation for the fact that few if any works of art have been found in the handful of known Neanderthal graves. The basic idea is that infants are "blooded to the clan" at birth (given marks of clan identification, including jewelry) so that a spirit of death, Wodevis, cannot "see" the clan member during life and therefore cannot "take" the clan member. The jewelry is removed at death so Wodevis can take the dead person into the forest, where dead spirits and ancestors live. You may also enjoy what I did with the occipital bun. I assumed this allowed a larger visual cortex, thus higher and faster processing of visual data, and gave my Neanderthal tribe the ability to see the true color of the sky, which is purple, not blue (ask a physicist). Thanks for posting this video!

[denibezdrob]

Human evolution is really interesting. Really enjoyed Rosie🌿

[jadelauren]

This was fascinating! Cheers Rosie, really enjoyed it 💞

[ferengiprofiteer]

You are a perfect example of language containing facial expression and hand gestures as well. We can "communicate" with Morris code, but language is more advanced and enhanced than that. Language development may predate articulate voice control entirely.
Ha! Australopithecus mimes.

[Oxcentric]

Another great video from you :) Just curious, what microphone do you use? I’m an offer holder at Univ for 2020 entry and I’m hoping to start doing Oxford vlogs myself, but I’m a little unsure what equipment other successful Oxford channels use!

[mty]

Hi Rosie, may I please ask wether you do online tutoring please? I need help with essay writing! Look forward to hearing from you! Thank you!

[sakshi]

we actually are able to breath and eat at the same time but only as infants and larynx undergoes changes and moves down and we loose the ablity

[StephanieSoressi]

O! You are saying "breath control". I have to start over, I thought you were on about BIRTH control.

[arateevhadle]

Hallo, I am subscriber of your channel and I want a video on ( I am indean and my 12th was complete in 2021 and I want to study in Oxford University and I seen video on this of your and I want to become a NASA scientist and I am choosing aeronautical engineering and cosmology and astronomy subject plz guide for this how it will there and how to get job in NASA after completion of course. Plz make video on it.

[dlhuuber]

Very interesting! Just a minor correction, Shanidar Cave is actually in Iraqi Kurdistan and not Israel.

[AlexKewbs]

Do you learn anout Neanderthals in normal archaeology?? Because I wanna study archaeology after college

[gremlinsarered]

Nowhere near enough views Rosie... And when you think about a video of someones kitten falling into a sink of suddy water gets millions of views?

To be 100% honest I'm not entirely sure all other hominids are actually extinct given this Kitten/Education dichotomy.