Computers Emulate Neanderthal Speech

Clarence writes "After some 30,000 years of silence, the Neanderthal race is once again speaking thanks to some advanced computer simulation. A Florida Atlantic University professor is using software vocal tract reconstructions to emulate the speech of our long-dead distant relatives. 'He says the ancient human's speech lacked the "quantal vowel" sounds that underlie modern speech. Quantal vowels provide cues that help speakers with different size vocal tracts understand one another, says Robert McCarthy, who was talking at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists in Columbus, Ohio, on April 11. In the 1970s, linguist Phil Lieberman, of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, inferred the dimensions of the larynx of a Neanderthal based on its skull. His team concluded that Neanderthal speech did not have the subtlety of modern human speech.'"

Comments

Not actually our ancestors

[xdancergirlx]

Although this doesn't make the simulation any less interesting, the article is misleading:
Neanderthals are not really "ancient humans", they are a different branch of the hominid line that probably co-existed with our ancestors.

I suppose it is fitting for an anthropologist but I also find it a bit anthroprocentric that because the simulation suggests they did not produce the same types of sounds as humans that they somehow did not have subtleties in their language nor could they have a spoken language. It is possible they simply spoke to one another differently (maybe in Morse Code using grunts and whistles).