A paper came out in Nature ecology & evolution last week suggesting that “Neanderthals evolved the auditory capacities to support a vocal communication system as efficient as modern human speech”. Link to article:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-021-01391-6
The story was picked up today by Scientific American:
“some studies cast doubt on whether Neandertals’ anatomy was suitable for producing the sounds of speech: their larynx was shaped differently than that of modern humans. Still, it was considered likely that our cousin species could produce a wide variety of sounds. Whether those sounds rose to the level of actual speech remains controversial.”
