Neanderthal language
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“While the archaeological evidence remains contested, that from neuroscience and genetics provides a compelling case for linguistic and cognitive differences between H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens.”
“The Neanderthals had a relatively large occipital lobe, devoting more brain matter to visual processing and making less available for other tasks such as language.
They also had a relatively small and differently shaped cerebellum. This sub-cortical structure, which is packed with neurons, contributes to many tasks including language processing, speaking and fluency. The uniquely spherical shape of the modern human brain evolved after the first Homo sapiens had appeared at 300,000 years ago.”
Mithen is the guy of ‘singing neanderthals’ fame and hmm (holistic, multimodal, mediated) communication (I believe there is a copy in the party library).
I suspect that the article is related to that he has a new book out:
Interesting. On another thread TM wrote that the humans and chimpanzees are “cousins”. One of the articles linked on the same page as the above describes Homo sapiens and Neanderthals as “cousins”. I realise that the point being made in both cases is that two species are related in the sense of sharing a common ancestor species.
Taken literally, a (first) cousin is someone who shares common grandparents. The table at the beginning of this article
would mean on this strict definition that it is gorillas who would be our first cousins and chimps our siblings (and old world monkeys our second cousins — same great-grandparents).
Neanderthals are of course much closer to us than that. In fact, are they even a separate species? If not, they are us.
A lurker on this forum has drawn attention to this article entitled “Were Neanderthals More Than Cousins to Homo Sapiens?”
https://www.sapiens.org/biology/hominin-species-neanderthals/
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