Loud and clear
Fossil finds suggest an early origin for human speech
By Tia Ghose
It may be time to rethink the stereotype of grunting, wordless Neandertals. The prehistoric humans may have been quite chatty — at least if the ear canals of their ancestors are any indication.
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The findings suggest human speech may have originated earlier than some researchers contend. Anthropologists disagree about whether language sprang up rapidly around 50,000 years ago or emerged more gradually over a longer period of time, says Rolf Quam, a paleoanthropologist at the American Natural History Museum in New York and coauthor of the new study.
The auditory bones of 530,000-year-old skulls indicate that an early human species called Homo heidelbergensis may have heard sounds much the way people do today. H. heidelbergensis are thought to be an ancestor of Neandertals. The findings could reignite debate about whether Neandertals could speak, Quam and colleagues report. The study is the first to use a fossil to reconstruct sensory perception in any Homo species, they add.