Chatty Cave Men? Me Neanderthal, Talk Good

Link to story

"It is possible that Neanderthals spoke just like we do," paleogeneticist Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told LiveScience.

Here is a pretty cool article that make the claim that Neanderthals spoke just as well as modern man. I wonder what, if any implications this may have on our perception of their intelligence level. Intersesting.

good find mod. i guess that geico needs to change their sales pitch now. seems that the ritzy caveman joke is now a thing of the past.

Great find, klev!

I really enjoy reading about advances in genetic and evolutionary knowledge. To have my entire Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon paradigm rocked is a treat. I'd done some reading on the FOXP2 gene before. It's very interesting to see that the date of its appearance in our genome is much earlier than it was originally thought.

Hey, Jean Auel, your books need updating.

ah..

talking: so easy, even a caveman can do it.

Wow, does Geico marketing rock, or what?

I am certainly no geneticist, but with more than one gene involved in speech, is there any way to prove just how any individual gene would express itself?

On the other hand..It's hard to imagine this other species of human getting by with only grunts and whistles.

On the third hand..maybe thats why they lost out to the Sapiens.
The inability to pass higher levels of technology to the next generation.

I'm not extremely versed on early man's forms, so please take this with a grain of salt.

I have often wondered if cavemen were more intelligent than previously thought. My opinion comes mostly from cave paintings, jewelry (necklaces, etc.) and tools. Just seems if they can create these types of things, it shows a window into their thinking that genetics cannot.

That's my two cents.

-Warlo

It really depends on how one define intelligence. The human brain have changed little since the "caveman" stage... We can simply LEARN more stuff today. Funnily enough, most of which we never really understand, lol.

reply to post by merka



Thats sort of what I was getting at.
If there was a lack of a lush lexicon..It would have been harder to pass information to the children.

The ability to describe things in detail with language, art, maybe even writing would allow one generation to stand on the shoulders of the previous.

Could be that Neanderthals lacked this particular toolkit.

I watched a documentary in which they analysed their physique, and determined that while they were short and hard as nails, they lost out to humans on speed when hitting open plains, apparently, because of their stubby little legs.

Another link on this subject mainly about the fact we (homo sapiens)conducted genocide on neanderthal man about 30,000 yrs ago but also suggest they could talk, had culture etc.

newsfromrussia.com...

Originally posted by johnb
Another link on this subject mainly about the fact we (homo sapiens)conducted genocide on neanderthal man about 30,000 yrs ago but also suggest they could talk, had culture etc.

That is an EXTREMELY simplified view on the matter.

Homo Sapiens simply did not have the resources to conduct "genocide" on the Neanderthals. It was a matter of out competing them. Scientists has also confirmed HS/Neanderthal hybrids, so clearly there where a little... friendlier... relations too.

No one can tell exactly what happened back then, but we do know one thing: Apes are extremely curious by nature.

[edit on 24-10-2007 by merka]