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It is impossible to figure this out and it's dumb to try to give a number. We don't think Neanderthals could speak? They also had languages.

by foxhop 2y ago

pfdietz 2y ago
How do we know Neanderthals had languages? I'm curious what the evidence is for this.
- vessenes 2y ago
  Well, we know that they could communicate (or be attractive enough) to interbreed with Homo sapiens — presumably they weren’t the genetically stronger species because their DNA is generally 1-3% represented in ours. We don’t know, as you note. But the genetic evidence combined with tool use and their large Supra-orbital indices (fairly big brains, if shaped differently than ours) all would make that the preferred prior I’d say.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    It's not clear how much interbreeding there was. It doesn't take many introgression events over the millennia to show up in the genetic record. And, to put it delicately, it's not clear any communication was involved in these events.
alephnerd 2y ago
We already know that genes regulates speech - for example, FOXP2 [0] - and have successfully sequenced the human genome, and have started similar initiatives on other archaic human and primate species. Phylogenetic Analysis has been fairly successful already in analyzing our genetic history, so I'm not sure why you'd think it's impossible. [0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOXP2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOXP2
- Mistletoe 2y ago
  I found this comment interesting. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/78o048/did_neanderthals_speak/dp7e4th/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/78o048/did... >As a quick point and this is quite a late response, having the same FOXP2 gene may not be enough. New evidence suggests >Using statistical software that evaluates gene expression based on the type of gene, Vanderbilt graduate student Laura Colbran found that Neandertal versions of the gene would have pumped out much less FOXP2 protein than expressed in modern brains. In living people, a rare mutation that causes members of a family to produce half the usual amount of FOXP2 protein also triggers severe speech defects, notes Simon Fisher, director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, who discovered the gene.
simne 2y ago
There are many cases, when animals (or birds) literally speak and even showing very human like behavior on talking. But, as I could see, only humans have so significant language culture that lead to great number of manuscripts. I will even accent - little number of humans write books, but near none other species do this.
gus_massa 2y ago
I'm not an expert, but I guess they mean "complex enough language" to discard isolated words and consider only "languages" that have "sentences that may have 5 words" or some more accurate criteria.
mcswell 1y ago
We do not know whether Neanderthals could speak.

It is impossible to figure this out and it's dumb to try to give a number. We don't think Neanderthals could speak? They also had languages.

by foxhop 2y ago

It is impossible to figure this out and it's dumb to try to give a number. We don't think Neanderthals could speak? They also had languages.

pfdietz 2y ago

How do we know Neanderthals had languages? I'm curious what the evidence is for this.

vessenes 2y ago
Well, we know that they could communicate (or be attractive enough) to interbreed with Homo sapiens — presumably they weren’t the genetically stronger species because their DNA is generally 1-3% represented in ours. We don’t know, as you note. But the genetic evidence combined with tool use and their large Supra-orbital indices (fairly big brains, if shaped differently than ours) all would make that the preferred prior I’d say.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  It's not clear how much interbreeding there was. It doesn't take many introgression events over the millennia to show up in the genetic record. And, to put it delicately, it's not clear any communication was involved in these events.

alephnerd 2y ago

We already know that genes regulates speech - for example, FOXP2 [0] - and have successfully sequenced the human genome, and have started similar initiatives on other archaic human and primate species. Phylogenetic Analysis has been fairly successful already in analyzing our genetic history, so I'm not sure why you'd think it's impossible. [0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOXP2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOXP2

Mistletoe 2y ago
I found this comment interesting. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/78o048/did_neanderthals_speak/dp7e4th/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/78o048/did... >As a quick point and this is quite a late response, having the same FOXP2 gene may not be enough. New evidence suggests >Using statistical software that evaluates gene expression based on the type of gene, Vanderbilt graduate student Laura Colbran found that Neandertal versions of the gene would have pumped out much less FOXP2 protein than expressed in modern brains. In living people, a rare mutation that causes members of a family to produce half the usual amount of FOXP2 protein also triggers severe speech defects, notes Simon Fisher, director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, who discovered the gene.

simne 2y ago

There are many cases, when animals (or birds) literally speak and even showing very human like behavior on talking. But, as I could see, only humans have so significant language culture that lead to great number of manuscripts. I will even accent - little number of humans write books, but near none other species do this.

gus_massa 2y ago

I'm not an expert, but I guess they mean "complex enough language" to discard isolated words and consider only "languages" that have "sentences that may have 5 words" or some more accurate criteria.

mcswell 1y ago

We do not know whether Neanderthals could speak.