How did Neanderthals Communicate?
Some believe they could speak, though they had a limited range of speech due to the position of the larynx. They did grunt sounds and make physical gestures. But scientists have proven that there is a place in the brain for language and that neanderthals had a small simple language and they actually had high pitched voices. Neanderthals were once portrayed by scientists as primitive cavemen. These ancient humans, who inhabited Europe 30,000 years ago, were believed to grunt and were considered incapable of creating specialised tools.
In the last three decades, the image of the Neanderthal has undergone a large revision with scientists challenging each other's research on this race's ability to speak.
But now, a group of scientists are no longer asking could they speak?, but rather, how clear was their speech? There are several theories on when people began to communicate through speech. Some scientists believe the ability to speak arose with the creativity and self-awareness needed to create stone technology over two million years ago. In order to convey tool-making technology, a form of spoken language was needed.
Others believe speech began appearing 40,000 years ago. It is feasible that Homo neanderthalensis, or Neanderthal, discussed the meaning of cave art and other artifacts, such as flutes, through words with their kin.
If this ancient race had vocal capabilities, it would mean that speech evolved earlier than evidence suggests. The stocky and muscular Neanderthals, the survivors of many Ice Ages, had inhabited Europe for 200,000 years.
While stone technology and cave art constitute material evidence, brain structure and words clearly do not and cannot be analysed in the same way, so how do researchers study ancient speech capabilities?
The answer lies in recreating the computer models of the human vocal tract, which includes the larynx or Adam's apple, the windpipe and the area inside the mouth, neither of which fossilise.
Analysing the sound of vowels is important because they are present in modern human speech. Some studies, such as one headed by linguist Philip Lieberman, in 1992, concluded Neanderthals were unable to pronounce the vowels – “a”, “i”, and “u”, as well as the consonants “k” and “g”. He claimed Neanderthals had a tongue and larynx badly placed for producing the range of sounds necessary for modern language.
Settling the question of the Neanderthal's vocal capability, and its efficacy, is important because it would provide at least one reason for explaining why modern humans, or Homo sapiens, came to dominate earth and the Neanderthal population began to decline and eventually became extinct.
A communication skill like speech, and the organisational abilities and diversity it would have spawned, could have given modern humans an advantage over their speech-deficient rivals - the Neanderthals who inhabited the same area of Europe.
A completely different theory proposes that when modern humans dispersed into Europe, in some areas they replaced the resident Neanderthals and in others interbred with them.
In Portugal, the bones of a 24,500-year-old boy show features that belong to both races.
After theorising on how these ancient ancestors pronounced their words, an important question remains a mystery: What did our ancient ancestors actually say? I guess we will never know that. The Neanderthals—there’s no evidence that they had language. But they must have had a sophisticated form of communication. They were just like humans, they might would have had to have told other people how they’re feeling, they would have had to look after their children and nurture them. They had to have made plans for group hunting and general movement. So what sort of communications system did they have? Now I came to the conclusion which must have been based on high degrees of musicality. Because we can see traces of that in our nearest living relatives. This seems to be the only form of communication with that language that would have been complex to allow them to have function as a social group, and yet not gone that extra step to modern language. So I think they communicated by using sets of phrases, almost like musical phrases that would have had semantic meanings, phrases such as something that would translate into “Let us share meat,” “We’ll go hunting” or “How are you feeling?” but would have been expressed in musical tones, different types of pitches, different types of rhythms. They might have used these also to build a sense of group identity, very much how we use music today, especially for caring for infants, you know just like we do today with our youngest children before they got language, we sing to them and move them rhythmically . I’m sure the Neanderthals would have been doing exactly the same.
Well, I don't know if we know exactly who the "first" person to speak English, but the English language was created by the Anglo-Saxons in England in about the mid-5th century. It was not created alone; they had help and influence from the Romans, the Greeks, the Celtic, the French, and the Germans.As you must know, there is no precise answer to this. Languages do not begin with one single person, but rather evolve within a group over a period of time. This whole discussion would be made even murkier by attempting to determine what one would consider to be "English." Would it be Anglo-Saxon? The direct ancestor of the English language we speak today? Anglo-Saxon is totally unintelligible to a speaker of Modern English, or even Middle English, as the language has changed so much over the centuries. If this unintelligible direct ancestor is English, then who's to say that we can't also consider Proto-Germanic, or Proto-Indo-European to be even more primitive forms of our language?
The truth is, this is a very impractical mode of thought. Linguists define the beginning of a language as the point at which it becomes distinct from its ancestor. While it could be argued that Anglo-Saxon would not be the earliest form of English, as it also gave rise to Scots, and thus was not the direct "starting point" of the English language, it is widely agreed upon as the first form of a distinctly English tongue.
In any event, we can't even know for sure when Anglo-Saxon became distinct from other languages which would also descend from its ancestor-- a form of Common West Germanic known as "Old Saxon." What we do know, is that the first attested (written down) evidence of a uniquely Anglo-Saxon language comes to us from a number of artifacts from the 5th and 6th centuries AD.
One such artifact is known as the "Undley bracteate." A bracteate is a thin metal plate that was commonly worn as jewelry, quite like a pendant. This artifact was found in Undley, in England, and is on display in the British Museum. It is adorned with a short inscription in what scholars agree is one of the most archaic forms of English.
So, in essence, the first people who began to speak a language that was distinctly English lived around 400-500 AD.
Maybe it was Adam and Eve. That is what i would assume.
Picture:http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/images/screenshots/various/earth_Real_color_Earth_surface_1__Shadmith.jpg
is it ok that i did one of earth siince they were the first people on earth? all of the pictures of them didn't have any clothes.
