What do we know

Neanderthals were our closest relatives and had much in common with anatomically modern humans. Much evidence suggests that they may have spoken, but to answer the real question as precisely as possible, the difference between language and speech must first be clarified.

Speech is the physical ability to verbally pronounce sounds and words. Language is a much more complex phenomenon, which means the conscious use of sounds for communication purposes. Some studies suggest that language arose between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago, long before Homo sapiens and Neanderthals split on the evolutionary tree.

Even before modern humans diverged from Neanderthals, their last common ancestor already had a clear language.
– say scientists from Boston University.

One of the most compelling evidence supporting this theory is that H. sapiens and Neanderthals shared two evolutionary mutations in a gene called FOXP2. This gene is associated with the control of mouth and facial muscles that help produce speech. Mutations in FOXP2 can cause language disorders in humans. This shows that Neanderthals were able to make speech-related movements. What about language?

Scientists studying modern humans with language disorders have hypothesized that humans evolved language comprehension through three distinct phenotypes:

• The most developed phenotype that most people have is syntactic language. He tells complex stories, uses possessive pronouns, and includes verb tenses and spatial prepositions.
• A less complex language comprehension phenotype, called modifier language, involves understanding colors, sizes, and numbers.
• The least complex language comprehension phenotype involves only command comprehension.

The command language understanding phenotype likely evolved at the earliest point in our evolutionary history, shortly after the human lineage split from the chimpanzee lineage six million years ago. Modifier language gradually evolved after 3 million years, as humans began making stone tools, and syntactic language emerged only 70,000 years ago.

So Neanderthals probably spoke like us but had a modifying language phenotype. In fact, Neanderthals could talk like a 3-year-old child; well-articulated speech, but they lacked a syntactical understanding of the language.
– researchers say.

Other studies also contribute to this picture

Some fossil studies also support the idea that Neanderthals had language. For example, in a 2021 study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, scientists took detailed CT scans of bones associated with hearing. They found that Neanderthals and modern humans had greater sensitivity than other primates to some sounds in the frequency range of spoken language. “There appears to be a similarity between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens in their hearing abilities and possibly in their language abilities as well,” Rolf Quam, a paleoanthropologist at Binghamton University in New York and co-author of the study, said at the time.

Because maintaining senses is energetically costly, most creatures do not develop sensory abilities they do not use. So, if Neanderthals had modern human hearing, the theory goes, they were probably also able to perceive modern human language and therefore had some form of language.

However, Quam acknowledged that there is some uncertainty about the language abilities of Neanderthals. For example, he said, some fossil research has yielded no results, such as the hyoid bone in the neck, which is related to speech. Even so, most experts would probably say that Neanderthals had some language ability. At least they had a much more complex communication system than other monkey or primate species.