[Merged]Neanderthals shared speech with modern humans

[Still Waters]

Fast-accumulating data seem to indicate that our close cousins, the Neanderthals, were much more similar to us than imagined even a decade ago. But did they have anything like modern speech and language? And if so, what are the implications for understanding present-day linguistic diversity?

http://phys.org/news...ern-humans.html

[Big Bad Voodoo]

Origins of modern language are ten times older than thought and could date back half a million years, according to Dutch researchers

It contradicts the popular idea that our modern language began with a sudden emergence of modernity presumably due to one or a few genetic mutations that gave rise to language

The scientists claim that far from being slow brutes, Neanderthals' cognitive capacities and culture were comparable to ours

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2359301/Neanderthals-talked-like-half-million-years-ago-shaped-language-speak-today.html

[Helen of Annoy]

I knew it.

Nothing scientific or sane to say, just that I knew it.

I always thought (for no rational reason) the Neanderthals are more important and were more than it was suggested, until recent years.