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And how could they've done this without language? I've heard this statement that neanderthals were "outcompeted" because homo sapiens had language and they did

And how could they've done this without language? I've heard this statement that neanderthals were "outcompeted" because homo sapiens had language and they did not (something about the way their anatomy didn't allow for making complex sounds). I call BS on that now. You can't do this kind of stuff without ability to communicate your intentions, future plans, rewards for other people and so on. Next we'll discover they were rendering that fat to grease their wheel axles with...

cdrini 1y ago
Both of those things can be true. Just because they didn't have language, doesn't mean they couldn't communicate, it just means they could likely only communicate primarily by showing instead of telling. And it's also clear why being able to communicate with language would indeed offer quite the competitive edge over that system.
- b112 1y ago
  During a period of high trust, I've watched crows training their young via showing. While crows have "crafty" intelligence, neanderthals would be more apt at this. But really, the logical first language would be gesture, an extension of already existing body language. And such language is employed by humans when hunting, at war, whenever quiet is preferred. Even a gesture language of a few dozen concepts is almost automatic, pointing, waving, directional motions, hushing motions, pointing at your head, clapping, etc. This being extended as full language in beings incapable of complex sound, seems viable.
  - cdrini 1y ago
    Very cool anecdote! And agreed, I think we're being a bit "handwavy" about what we mean when we say "language"; it seems like more of a spectrum. I'm not sure where we draw the line between, say, language that animals use which, to the best of our knowledge, do not show complex/abstract communication, and human languages. And who knows where Neanderthal language/communication would fall on that spectrum!
    - adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
      there are plenty of imaginable levels of language. there's everything from ability to communicate danger (which even trees seem to have), having simple constructs like names/ a handful of nouns for specific types of danger (e.g. Bear!) which is roughly where we think dolphins and some apes are. above that likely we get some verbs for coordinating hunting. at some point in this process you start getting syntax, tense, declension, adjectives etc. If I had to guess basic sentence structure probably goes back to the beginning of homo. The differences between Sapiens and others is likely much more subtle. e.g. symbolism, myth making, abstraction or something like that.
bjackman 1y ago
Yeah I think it's pretty inconceivable at this point that Sapiens were the first ones to have language. I think it's still reasonable to argue that Neandertals lacked certain capacities that we have, based on differences in the evidence from tools and art that's attributed to them vs Sapiens. But IMO this would clearly have been a difference of degree, not at atomic shift. They were obviously _people_.
- fransje26 1y ago
  At the moment, your comment is being heavily down-voted for what seems to be a totally reasonable point of view. In recent years we've went from "completely primitive and segregated Neanderthals", to "oh, we share quite a bit of DNA with the Neanderthals", and "the Neanderthals engaged in complex symbolic thought", as well as "the Neanderthals were pretty advanced artists". The current article is a further demonstration of that trend. So it's fair to say that our original assumptions of the Neanderthals were profoundly flawed, and, as we go, we discover that they were different to us by a difference of degree -as you propose-, as opposed to the notion of being radically and binarily different. In that vein, it is not a stretch to imagine that we were perhaps also completely wrong in our assumptions of their ability to communicate by sound, i.e. mastering languages.
  - b800h 1y ago
    What are the chances that we discover that in some ways they were more advanced than early homo sapiens (I'm not saying "us" here, as I have a lot of Neanderthal DNA)?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - timschmidt 1y ago
      Well they hard larger brains, more muscle mass, larger sinuses which aid in breathing in cold weather and possibly smell, denser bone structure, and a number of other possible advantages. It has been proposed that the advantage we wield which led to out-competing / interbreeding with them may have been a superior ability to starve - i.e. use fewer calories - during periods like the last ice age.
jl6 1y ago
It seems weird to think there needs to be a major biological distinction to explain the idea of being outcompeted. Modern humans outcompete each other at various things all the time, right now (peacefully and non-peacefully) and it’s not because of any differences as drastic as having language vs not having language.
- slow_typist 1y ago
  And neanderthalensis was not outcompeted, their genes survived in Homo sapiens until today.
  - neanderthaul 1y ago
    What if we are actually neanderthals with some homo sapien genes
    - amarait 1y ago
      Seems putting neanderthal on your username increases the percentage tenthfold
contrarian1234 1y ago
Do you think a community of deaf people wouldn't be able to do it? :)
- cyco130 1y ago
  Deaf homo sapiens sapienses do have perfectly good language skills.
  - tremon 1y ago
    The original argument was that neanderthals didn't have good language skills because "their anatomy didn't allow for making complex sounds". Pointing out that deaf or mute humans still have complex language skills seems like an adequate counterargument to me.
    - cyco130 1y ago
      Fair enough. I fully agree.
    - andrewflnr 1y ago
      That ignores the co-evolution between throat anatomy and brain structures related to language. There's no reason to select for language ability in the brain over evolutionary time if the throat can't use it. If mere ability to use sign language was enough to push language development, chimps would do much better with human-invented sign languages. Deaf and/or mute humans are, I presume, co-opting language skill "meant" (selected) for vocal language.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  Do you think deaf people can't communicate?
detaro 1y ago
As far as I know the current evidence points towards neanderthal ability to make sounds not being that much different than early homo sapiens. The are assumed to have had less complex language and thinking, e.g. couldn't abstract or symbolize things, unlike homo sapiens. But that doesn't mean no language or no ability to communicate at all.
dghughes 1y ago
>neanderthals were "outcompeted" because homo sapiens had language I think any small groups of humans were just one virus away from extinction. Even we almost disappeared. A species that has a very low population for the entire species then all get sick that is bad even if all do not die. Your species loses genetic diversity and then another virus or even a large natural disaster strikes the group wiping it out. Maybe we just were lucky and survived not due to any skill better than other species.
tremon 1y ago
There's plenty of ways to communicate complex ideas without using complex language, as long as you have sufficient time to interact. Skills can be taught using demonstration, imitation, and correction; ideas can be drawn or acted out. What language enables, in my view, is accurate communication through intermediaries. It makes a lot of difference whether you need to supervise someone through all the ways that cooking on leather can go wrong versus richly explaining those same failure modes and how to avoid them. The former pretty much prescribes that most complex knowledge will stay within a tribe or a close community, whereas a rich vocabulary allows knowledge to spread readily among trade routes.
- pests 1y ago
  Right, it’s not like people born deaf are just completely useless as humans. Just like we have sign language and there is a whole concept of body language alone is enough to show it would be possible for them. We have people like Helen Keller who existed. In Jean M Auel’s Earths Children books the Neanderthals communicated via hand gestures and vocalizations.
willhslade 1y ago
I thought the idea was that Homo Sapiens's shoulders were capable of ranged weapons like atl atls while Neanderthals were ambush hunters.
- heikkilevanto 1y ago
  There are many successful ambush hunters in nature. It is not such a bad strategy
mobilejdral 1y ago
Neanderthals had the FOXP2 gene, which is associated with speech and language.
- hollerith 1y ago
  That doesn't mean it was used for speech and language: evolution frequently finds a new purpose for a gene, and the previous purpose does not have to be human-comprehensible.

cdrini 1y ago

Both of those things can be true. Just because they didn't have language, doesn't mean they couldn't communicate, it just means they could likely only communicate primarily by showing instead of telling. And it's also clear why being able to communicate with language would indeed offer quite the competitive edge over that system.

b112 1y ago
During a period of high trust, I've watched crows training their young via showing. While crows have "crafty" intelligence, neanderthals would be more apt at this. But really, the logical first language would be gesture, an extension of already existing body language. And such language is employed by humans when hunting, at war, whenever quiet is preferred. Even a gesture language of a few dozen concepts is almost automatic, pointing, waving, directional motions, hushing motions, pointing at your head, clapping, etc. This being extended as full language in beings incapable of complex sound, seems viable.
- cdrini 1y ago
  Very cool anecdote! And agreed, I think we're being a bit "handwavy" about what we mean when we say "language"; it seems like more of a spectrum. I'm not sure where we draw the line between, say, language that animals use which, to the best of our knowledge, do not show complex/abstract communication, and human languages. And who knows where Neanderthal language/communication would fall on that spectrum!
  - adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
    there are plenty of imaginable levels of language. there's everything from ability to communicate danger (which even trees seem to have), having simple constructs like names/ a handful of nouns for specific types of danger (e.g. Bear!) which is roughly where we think dolphins and some apes are. above that likely we get some verbs for coordinating hunting. at some point in this process you start getting syntax, tense, declension, adjectives etc. If I had to guess basic sentence structure probably goes back to the beginning of homo. The differences between Sapiens and others is likely much more subtle. e.g. symbolism, myth making, abstraction or something like that.

bjackman 1y ago

Yeah I think it's pretty inconceivable at this point that Sapiens were the first ones to have language. I think it's still reasonable to argue that Neandertals lacked certain capacities that we have, based on differences in the evidence from tools and art that's attributed to them vs Sapiens. But IMO this would clearly have been a difference of degree, not at atomic shift. They were obviously _people_.

fransje26 1y ago
At the moment, your comment is being heavily down-voted for what seems to be a totally reasonable point of view. In recent years we've went from "completely primitive and segregated Neanderthals", to "oh, we share quite a bit of DNA with the Neanderthals", and "the Neanderthals engaged in complex symbolic thought", as well as "the Neanderthals were pretty advanced artists". The current article is a further demonstration of that trend. So it's fair to say that our original assumptions of the Neanderthals were profoundly flawed, and, as we go, we discover that they were different to us by a difference of degree -as you propose-, as opposed to the notion of being radically and binarily different. In that vein, it is not a stretch to imagine that we were perhaps also completely wrong in our assumptions of their ability to communicate by sound, i.e. mastering languages.
- b800h 1y ago
  What are the chances that we discover that in some ways they were more advanced than early homo sapiens (I'm not saying "us" here, as I have a lot of Neanderthal DNA)?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - timschmidt 1y ago
    Well they hard larger brains, more muscle mass, larger sinuses which aid in breathing in cold weather and possibly smell, denser bone structure, and a number of other possible advantages. It has been proposed that the advantage we wield which led to out-competing / interbreeding with them may have been a superior ability to starve - i.e. use fewer calories - during periods like the last ice age.

jl6 1y ago

It seems weird to think there needs to be a major biological distinction to explain the idea of being outcompeted. Modern humans outcompete each other at various things all the time, right now (peacefully and non-peacefully) and it’s not because of any differences as drastic as having language vs not having language.

slow_typist 1y ago
And neanderthalensis was not outcompeted, their genes survived in Homo sapiens until today.
- neanderthaul 1y ago
  What if we are actually neanderthals with some homo sapien genes
  - amarait 1y ago
    Seems putting neanderthal on your username increases the percentage tenthfold

contrarian1234 1y ago

Do you think a community of deaf people wouldn't be able to do it? :)

cyco130 1y ago
Deaf homo sapiens sapienses do have perfectly good language skills.
- tremon 1y ago
  The original argument was that neanderthals didn't have good language skills because "their anatomy didn't allow for making complex sounds". Pointing out that deaf or mute humans still have complex language skills seems like an adequate counterargument to me.
  - cyco130 1y ago
    Fair enough. I fully agree.
  - andrewflnr 1y ago
    That ignores the co-evolution between throat anatomy and brain structures related to language. There's no reason to select for language ability in the brain over evolutionary time if the throat can't use it. If mere ability to use sign language was enough to push language development, chimps would do much better with human-invented sign languages. Deaf and/or mute humans are, I presume, co-opting language skill "meant" (selected) for vocal language.
IAmBroom 1y ago
Do you think deaf people can't communicate?

detaro 1y ago

As far as I know the current evidence points towards neanderthal ability to make sounds not being that much different than early homo sapiens. The are assumed to have had less complex language and thinking, e.g. couldn't abstract or symbolize things, unlike homo sapiens. But that doesn't mean no language or no ability to communicate at all.

dghughes 1y ago

>neanderthals were "outcompeted" because homo sapiens had language I think any small groups of humans were just one virus away from extinction. Even we almost disappeared. A species that has a very low population for the entire species then all get sick that is bad even if all do not die. Your species loses genetic diversity and then another virus or even a large natural disaster strikes the group wiping it out. Maybe we just were lucky and survived not due to any skill better than other species.

tremon 1y ago

There's plenty of ways to communicate complex ideas without using complex language, as long as you have sufficient time to interact. Skills can be taught using demonstration, imitation, and correction; ideas can be drawn or acted out. What language enables, in my view, is accurate communication through intermediaries. It makes a lot of difference whether you need to supervise someone through all the ways that cooking on leather can go wrong versus richly explaining those same failure modes and how to avoid them. The former pretty much prescribes that most complex knowledge will stay within a tribe or a close community, whereas a rich vocabulary allows knowledge to spread readily among trade routes.

pests 1y ago
Right, it’s not like people born deaf are just completely useless as humans. Just like we have sign language and there is a whole concept of body language alone is enough to show it would be possible for them. We have people like Helen Keller who existed. In Jean M Auel’s Earths Children books the Neanderthals communicated via hand gestures and vocalizations.

willhslade 1y ago

I thought the idea was that Homo Sapiens's shoulders were capable of ranged weapons like atl atls while Neanderthals were ambush hunters.

heikkilevanto 1y ago
There are many successful ambush hunters in nature. It is not such a bad strategy

mobilejdral 1y ago

Neanderthals had the FOXP2 gene, which is associated with speech and language.

hollerith 1y ago
That doesn't mean it was used for speech and language: evolution frequently finds a new purpose for a gene, and the previous purpose does not have to be human-comprehensible.