The Neanderthals spoke

Neanderthals, often described as club-wielding snoring beasts, likely had the capacity for sophisticated speech, perhaps even similar to ours, researchers published Thursday in the journal Current Biology

The DNA analysis showed that Neanderthals share with Homo sapiens two main changes - in the FOXP2 gene known to be involved in speech, raising the possibility that these creatures uttered something that looked like a pre-language.
"From the point of view of this gene, at least the Neanderthals could speak like us," says Johannes Kraus, a biochemist at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig who led the research. However, according to him, genes that have not yet been identified may also be responsible for the ability to speak.

FOXP2 produces a protein that turns other genes off and on, and people who carry a non-functioning copy of the gene suffer from language and speech problems. The gene is found in a long line of animals - from mice to orangutans and scientists now believe that a very slight change in this gene appeared in humans less than 200 thousand years ago. The findings published in the journal Current Biology lead the scientists to hypothesize that the genetic changes probably appeared earlier, perhaps even 400 years ago.

"We were surprised to find the same variant of the FOXP2 gene that humans also have in Neanderthals, this raises the possibility that the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and humans also carried the gene."
The Neanderthals are a line that ends in a dead end, in the evolution of man, and who settled Europe and parts of Western and Central Asia. The researchers identified that they specialized in making tools, using animal skins to keep their bodies warm and took care of each other.
Most researchers believe that Neanderthals survived in Europe until the arrival of the first modern humans about 30 years ago, although controversial findings from last year raise the possibility that they survived until 24 years ago.
"No one knows if the Neanderthals could speak, but these findings show that they had at least the main genetic change responsible for speech - an evolutionary development important to the survival of humans," says Kraus.

"Language is more than a sophisticated way to transfer knowledge to the next generation," he said. "You live like a baby if you don't study." In their study, the researchers extracted DNA samples from a collection of Neanderthal remains recently discovered at a site in northern Spain.
"Because the bones were well preserved, the scientists were able to obtain DNA from the cell nuclei of Neanderthals to open a way to a better understanding of the evolution of modern humans and Neanderthals," says Krauss.
"The DNA of the cell contains the genetic information that humans carry. And we can now explore any Neanderthal garden we're interested in.”