Momentous Discovery Shows Neanderthals Could Produce Human-Like Speech

La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1, one of the Neanderthal skulls scanned for the study. (Eunostos/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Our Neanderthal cousins had the capacity to both hear and produce the speech sounds of modern humans, a study published in 2021 found.

Based on a detailed analysis and digital reconstruction of the structure of the bones in their skulls, the study settled one aspect of a decades-long debate over the linguistic capabilities of Neanderthals.

"This is one of the most important studies I have been involved in during my career," said palaeoanthropologist Rolf Quam of Binghamton University back in 2021.

"The results are solid and clearly show the Neanderthals had the capacity to perceive and produce human speech. This is one of the very few current, ongoing research lines relying on fossil evidence to study the evolution of language, a notoriously tricky subject in anthropology."

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