Chatty cavemen? Me Neanderthal, talk good

[StarryEyedLad]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21362048/

Chatty cavemen? Me Neanderthal, talk good
Findings suggest human relative may have had language skills

By Charles Q. Choi
Live Science
Updated: 12:22 p.m. ET Oct 18, 2007
Neanderthals might have spoken just like humans do now, new genetic findings suggest.

Neanderthals are humanity's closest extinct relatives. Since their discovery more than 150 years ago, researchers have found out they could make tools just like our ancestors could, but whether Neanderthals also had advanced language, rather than mere grunts and groans, has remained hotly debated.

To learn more, scientists investigated DNA from Neanderthal bones collected from a cave in northern Spain, concentrating on a gene, FOXP2, which is to date the only one known to play a role in speech and language. People with an abnormal copy of this gene have speech and language problems.

Genes similar to FOXP2 are found throughout the genomes of the animal kingdom, from fish to alligators to songbirds. The molecule that human FOXP2 generates differs from chimpanzee FOXP2's by just two amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.

Past research suggests the gene's modern human variant evolved fewer than 200,000 years ago. Now scientists find the Neanderthal FOXP2 gene is identical to ours. The ancestors of Neanderthals diverged from ours roughly 300,000 years ago, according to the latest thinking. Some studies have suggested that the two species might have intermingled after that, however.

"It is possible that Neanderthals spoke just like we do," paleogeneticist Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told LiveScience.

"Of course many genes are involved in language," cautioned Krause, the new study's lead researcher. As scientists discover more of such genes, these will have to be examined in Neanderthals as well, he said.

Krause noted that some might suggest that interbreeding or "gene flow" (aka sex) between modern humans and Neanderthals led to us having FOXP2 in common. "However, we see no evidence for gene flow in the Y chromosome sequences," he said. Instead, the modern human and Neanderthal Y chromosomes are substantially different genetically.



Well, oogah boogah!

Somebody should tell the Geico cavemen they've finally been vindicated!
:whisper:tele:announce

[lisaann]

Well, oogah boogah!

Somebody should tell the Geico cavemen they've finally been vindicated!
:whisper:tele:announce

:aha


Gee, imagine that! A human is descovered to have talked like a human. Will the wonders never cease. :heh

[KitsapGirl]

I dunno...do we speak intelligent language? Have you watched TV lately? or heard my kids talk?

Well, Duh! For sure! Totally! As if! huh? Wha? UhHuh...

much of our speach is gutteral sounds...

[KnightErrant]

The scientists have made plaster casts of the inside of Neanderthal skulls, to help determine the functions and structure of their brains. There turned out to be much less difference than was thought. The areas responsible for cognitive thought and language were basically identical. They were most probably simply a different race of humans, like the races we have today.

[Faline]

There were no neandrathals.

[Munkh]

There were no neandrathals.

:thumb

[KitsapGirl]

There were no neandrathals.

exactly why we're having fun with this thread....:heh

[><>KarateMom<><]

:shocked
What no Neanderthals?
Don't tell Lucy this.:whisper

[Cameron]

Observe humans in mass settings. You can still see people with those jutting skulls and weird foreheads.

If scientists were to one day in the distant future dig up a colony of pygmies, they would deduce that at one time the average height of man was 4' 7".

A few discoveries do not account for all of mankind.

[StarryEyedLad]

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i4/neanderthal.asp

Interesting article!

I also think "Neanderthals" were just humans who looked a little different, maybe because they lived in sparsely populated, isolated areas and in-bred a bit?

The caring Neandertal

Creation Archive > Volume 18 Issue 4 > The caring Neandertal


First published:
Creation 18(4):16–17
September 1996


by A.J. Monty White

If we are ever asked to imagine what a Neandertal was like, most of us would think of some half-witted cretin. In fact, the word Neandertal is often used as a term of abuse. It generally signifies that the individual to whom reference is being made acts brutishly and has very little feeling for others. This is a pity, because the more we learn about the Neandertals, the more we are forced to conclude that although they may have looked brutish, they were very caring people, who looked after the sick and elderly members of their communities.

The Neandertals are named after the Neander Valley, not far from Düsseldorf in Germany. The fossilized remains of a Neandertal man were first found there in a cave in 1857. Since then, remains of Neandertals have been found in western Europe, the Near East, and western Asia. Compared with modern Europeans, the Neandertal people were rather robust, and so for almost a century it was mistakenly believed that they were half way between ape-like creatures and humans.1

The idea that the Neandertals were a link between apes and humans was reinforced by drawings which depicted them as stooping half-ape/half-human brutes ambling along on the outsides of their feet, like some oversized chimpanzee. This view persisted until the mid-1950s when a couple of American anatomists concluded that there was no valid reason for assuming that the Neandertal posture was different from that of modern humans. They went on to suggest that if a Neandertal man were bathed, shaved, and dressed in modern clothing he would probably pass unnoticed in a New York subway!2

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None of this is surprising when we consider that they were not primitive evolutionary ‘links’. They were people, forced to live in harsh conditions, after the dispersal of humanity at Babel, during the great post-Flood Ice Age.3



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A.J. Monty White, B.Sc., Ph.D., C.Chem., MRSC, is a well-known author and creation speaker in the United Kingdom. He is the author of the book Wonderfully Made, which deals with the origin of people.

References and notes
1. Anthropologist Marcellin Boule was responsible for much of the attribution of ‘subhuman’ characteristics to Neandertals. It seems that what really persuaded him about the truth of human evolution was the Piltdown skull, which later turned out to be a clever fraud. In turn, this conviction caused him to emphasize and exaggerate some characters in Neandertal bones to fit the ‘subhuman’ idea.
2. John Reader, Missing Links, Book Club Associates, London, 1981, p. 36.
3. See Life in the Great Ice Age, by Michael and Beverly Oard, Creation-Life Publishers, Inc., California, 1993.