Short of inventing a time machine, researchers must infer Neanderthal linguistic capabilities from the remains they left behind. It’s often said that “language doesn’t fossilize”. But what do preserve are language proxies — bones, artifacts and DNA that indicate the presence of language or speech. While no single line of evidence is sufficiently convincing, the preponderance of evidence allows researchers to hypothesize about Neanderthal language.
What do you think? Could Neanderthals speak like Sapiens or not?
YEC creationism would insist there was no neanderthals. its a myth. they are just segregated populations of humans that adapted some minor differences within the spectrum of visable modern human differences.
There is no dna to language.
People are , like God, incredibly intelligent, think, then express these thoughts by the use of the tongue making a diversity of sound combinations.
At present there is a list of agreed and memorized sound combinations called languages.
In fact it would not be if these neanderthals had language but rather if they used tones/sounds as we do which dominates our words.
As Leonard Berstein said there is a common tonal language.
This would be the first musing/speculating about sounds/tones before the words/language.
Did Neanderthals have a common tonal . These researchers should do first things first.