Neanderthals were Homo sapiens Neanderthalis

https://evolutionaryanthropology.quora.com/Language-doesn-t-fossilize-But-there-is-strong-evidence-suggesting-that-Neanderthal-people-must-have-spoken-languages?ch=17&oid=60905397&share=3b0de7d1&srid=6MG9J&target_type=post



Language doesn’t fossilize. But there is strong evidence suggesting that Neanderthal people must have spoken languages: • They had symbolic art. • They had complex technology. • They had large brains, and most were right-handed. • Their throat and ear anatomy resembled ours. • They were closely related to us.


Symbolic Art At the time the Neanderthals lived neither humans nor Neanderthal people left much real art. What we do have suggests that they had a sense of design. Here’s a couple of designs that they have left on cave walls.[1][2] [3]


Here’s a design they seem to have carved into a deer foot bone.[4]



And they seem to have used eagle talons as jewelry.[5]


Neanderthals apparently used mineral pigments such as red ochre (hematite) and manganese dioxide at several sites in Europe. We don’t know what they did with these pigments, but art is the obvious possibility.[6] There’s a lot of uncertainty here because it’s hard to judge bits of stuff left behind so long ago. And these examples don’t look like much. But what we have is no less advanced than anything as old from humans. This level of artistic ability suggests that they could handle the sort of abstract concepts that languages are built on. Sophisticated Technology Everyone knows that Neanderthals created and used tools. Many of those tools were created through several different multi-step processes. Neanderthals created tools from stone, bone, and probably wood.


But you might not know that some of these tools seem to have been used to process animal hides, probably to make robes or clothes. This picture shows how they might have used a tool scientists call a lissoir.[7]



All of this means that they had complex technologies that must have been passed on somehow from one generation to the next. It’s hard to imagine how they could have done that without language.



Brain In another answer I explain that Neanderthal brains were arranged differently from ours and they probably had a somewhat different set of mental abilities than we do.[8] You can get a sense of that by comparing the overall shape of a modern human brain (left) to that of a Neanderthal (right).







But their brains were as large as ours overall. They certainly had enough brainpower to handle language. Modern human brains are asymmetrical with many language functions on the left side of the brain. Scientists suspect that this is related to our tendency to prefer our right hand over our left.[9]



It isn’t possible to analyze fossil brains for asymmetry, but it is possible to discover whether Neanderthals were predominantly right-handed. Neanderthals seem to have had unusually strong right arms based on studies of a number of upper arm bones (humeri) from Neanderthal specimens. We humans typically have a 4–13 percent difference in muscle development between our right and left arms. Neanderthals, on the other hand (pun intended), had up to 50 percent or more muscular asymmetry.[10]


Great apes, on the other hand, have inconsistent hand preferences, preferring the right hand in some situations and the left in others.[11] So, Neanderthals were like us and unlike the great apes. Throat and ear anatomy Humans have an unusual throat anatomy that allows us to produce many different sounds but makes us prone to choking. This chart compares our throat to that of a chimpanzee.[12]



Studies of Neanderthal anatomy confirm that their throats were arranged like ours. They could have produced most of the sounds we can.[13] [14] And their ears were tuned to detect the frequencies that are common in speech, just as our ears are tuned.[15] [16] This chart is a type of auditory spectrogram showing which sound frequencies Neanderthals and humans can best detect.[17]



Our close relatives must have been much like us. Evolution is a gradual process. There are no sudden jumps where one species gains an ability in a single jump. Language must have come about gradually through a long sequence of subtle changes starting with very modest abilities like chimpanzees have. Because Neanderthals were closely related to us, they must have shared many of our abilities. It’s hard to imagine


Conclusion Without a live Neanderthal around, we can’t be 100% certain but all the evidence points to their having language. More to read This book is very helpful. Footnotes [1] Is that rock hashtag really the first evidence of Neanderthal art? [2] A rock engraving made by Neanderthals in Gibraltar [3] Neanderthal artists made oldest-known cave paintings [4] Is It Art? You May Have to Ask a Neanderthal Critic. [5] Neanderthals wore eagle talons as jewellery - Nature [6] Neanderthal Behavior [7] Neanderthals may have invented a tool that is still in use today [8] Israel Ramirez's answer to I’m possibly alone, but I believe Neanderthals were as smart as us back then. They went extinct only because there were so few of them and so many of us. Who else agrees Neanderthals were equals in intelligence or maybe slightly less? [9] How does the brain process speech? We now know the answer, and it’s fascinating [10] The Neanderthal Arm—Hints About Handedness [11] Israel Ramirez's answer to At what point in human evolution did we develop a dominant hand? Is this a trait found in other primates as well? [12] Primer: Acoustics and Physiology of Human Speech [13] Micro-Biomechanics of the Kebara 2 Hyoid and Its Implications for Speech in Neanderthals [14] Neanderthals and Homo sapiens had similar auditory and speech capacities - Nature Ecology & Evolution [15] Neanderthals Listened to the World Much Like Us [16] Neanderthals could hear like we can [17] Neanderthals and Homo sapiens had similar auditory and speech capacities - Nature Ecology & Evolution