Our biggest difference with Neanderthals – David Reich

[tayzonday]

Parrots got a vocal tract that can make many sounds too. I wonder what evolutionary pressure caused that?

[toi_techno]

Neanderthals definitely had a more sophisticated grasp of language than all TikTok users

[oldernu]

Read a study that suggested Neanderthal s had a higher voice pitch and were unable to make certain speech sounds, due to different structures in larynx, throat muscles, other tissues. David Reich is so insightful. We have so much to learn.

[johnrobinson]

Short version: we talked the other species to death.

[SteveBull-tgmi]

Less we get too proud of ourselves, its worth remembering that Neanderthals existed on the Earth far longer than we have.

[jahuti]

This is a very good point but it doesn't mean that Denisovans and Neanderthals could not speak, only that their speech would have differed somewhat from modern humans. A modern human with a deformity or injury to the vocal mechanism can still speak because their brain is designed to do so, even if their speech is affected somewhat. If they could find evidence of Neanderthal or Denisovans brains having less developed speech centres then that would be far more significant.

[jamesswanson]

Could Neanderthals have had a whistle language such as survives in the canary islands and doesn't need a sophisticated vocal tract. In fact, hunters still communicate with whistles at times and so it seems this may have been an early stage of language in hunting societies.

[TheStrangeBloke]

It seems very plausible to me that even without these changes you'd still have language of some kind, but a less articulate form. After all, language is an essential aspect of human social behavior, and neandertals exhibit the social behavior, so it follows they'd have some kind of language even if it lacked some of the traits of modern human languages.

[altontacoma]

The visuals were very helpful, thank you!

[stefanthorpenberg]

The idea that neanderthals had no language is very old. We can always stare at genes and try to interpret them. But if we check the Bruniquel cave in Languedoc, we know that neandrthals build circles of stalagmites in a total dark cave, that they burned meat from a cave bear, and that they had some 36 fires there, so they visited the cave at least some 30 times, and there was a tent there from a hide. So… to get all that together, they first need torches, a hide, meat, and the original idea why it was necessary to build circles in the dark from some 400 stalagmites that they broke off from the cave floor. Most likely it was some ritual they had 330 meter into an absolute dark cave. Now, imagine that you should organize all that without a language? That you could only show some signs, and say ugh ugh? It’s impossible. But did they have the same complex language as we have today? No, absolute not. But sapiens did not have that complex language either at that time. The complexity of language comes much later, in the beginning of civilisation and written language. But it’s a cultural development, not a genetic.

[springfieldbearpatrol]

What's cool about Neanderthals is we have fossils/skulls for comparisons, plus we sequenced DNA (99.7% match for humans). Looking at the skulls you can infer a different topology. Bigger eye sockets, eyes higher up on the face, thick brow, and of most interest > the occipital bun. The thought here is that the brain was different with that occipital bun housing the "vision processing" parts of the brain. Whereas modern humans have eyes lower, and brain sitting more so above the eyes with a flat forehead. The theory is that humans have this different layout for cognitive functions. Incoming speculation: it's likely humans were a bit more dynamic - we could out think, out plan, out organize, out network, out communicate, and out compete the other hominids - based on our unique design. Much of that is speculation. But think about Neanderthals living in extreme north climates - they need better vision and more robust bodies to survive. Perhaps more so than communication skills. I'm not answering the question about Neanderthals having language - I have no idea. I'm just speculating that the old axiom of Neanderthals being a bit more brutish and simplistic may be true. Certainly they were highly capable - they survived for hundreds of thousand of years.

[YaBoiDREX]

I wonder how much sign language was used among Neanderthal and Sapien populations. Probably a lot since we use hand signals a lot in our day to day lives today in the modern age.

[deplorablecovfefe]

Our ability to speak is our greatest asset. The ability to communicate each others thoughts exactly.

[dougsinthailand]

I haven’t read the original paper, but it seems very interesting. The question of Neanderthal speech finds clues in areas such as brain structure, apparent ability to articulate, evidence in culture and I think the FOX2 gene as well. It’s obvious that there is some major genetic difference happening among archaic individuals. I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure.

[JMac-fjrg]

The biggest difference between Neanderthals and humans was: menopause. Of the hundreds of Neanderthal skeletons we have, none of them are greater than 50 years old. Humans live till 70. That means we humans have a 3rd generation that is a repository for knowledge, and can assist the tribe with child rearing

[davefoc]

An argument against the idea that Neanderthals couldn't speak is that they interbred with humans. But if most of the interbreeding was involuntary then maybe speech was less important? Regardless interbreeding between sapiens and neanderthals is believed to have occurred in two different time periods between two different groups of Homo sapiens. Why wouldn't at least some of the sapiens speech methylation mechanism have transferred to at least some of the Neanderthals during one of those events?

ETA: @tayzonday below mentioned parrots. That suggests that speech is possible with some very non human vocal mechanisms. So why not in Neanderthals with a vocal setup that was different than the one sapiens have?

ETA: Could improving speech capability in sapiens have been part of the reason neanderthal/sapiens didn't interbreed in the last 10, 000 years or so of Neanderthal existence?

[ryanfranz]

It’s almost as though cultural accumulation, and anything that would’ve assisted in cultural accumulation such as the ability to speak in fast, fluent, complex sounds (and even singing), leading to easier spread of shared knowledge, is what was being selected for in modern humans. I.e. there’s a real sense in which culture is the organism that’s succeeding or failing and subject to darwinian pressures, and humans are merely the host (and selectively pressured in the direction of an ideal host).

[jamesheartney]

Vocalization isn't the only possible format for sophisticated language. ASL users have a highly complex and sophisticated language which does not involve speech.

[bobaldo]

Neanderthals had language sufficiently complex to pass on whatever complex skills they developed.

[Ellifiknow]

The Neanderthals must have not watched Starship Troopers, where the teacher tells the students that violence is the supreme authority from which all other authority is derived. They were overwhelmed by homo sapiens.