Could Neanderthals speak? The answer may depend on whether they used make-up.
, an archaeologist from the University of Bordeaux, France, has found crafted lumps of pigment 鈥� essentially crayons 鈥� left behind by Neanderthals across Europe.
He says that Neanderthals, who most likely had pale skin, used these dark pigments to mark their own as well as animal skins. And, since body art is a form of communication, this implies that the Neanderthals could speak, d鈥橢rrico says.
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Working with of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, d鈥橢rrico has recovered hundreds of blocks of black manganese pigment from two neighbouring sites at Pech de l鈥橝z茅 in France, which were occupied by Neanderthals. These add to evidence of pigment among Neanderthal from some 39 other sites.
The pigments were not just smeared onto the body like camouflage, d鈥橢rrico says, but fashioned into drawing tools.
鈥淭he flat, elongated surfaces on the archaeological specimens are consistent, as confirmed experimentally, with producing clearly visible straight black lines, perhaps arranged to produce abstract designs,鈥� says d鈥橢rrico, who presented his work on 15 March at the in Barcelona, Spain.
Essential words
Body painting, argues d鈥橢rrico, is a 鈥渕aterial proxy鈥� for symbolic communication. What鈥檚 more, he says, the techniques for making the symbols, and the meaning they carry, would have to be transmitted through language.
And body painting isn鈥檛 the only proxy associated with Neanderthal remains. Neanderthals adorned their bodies with ornamentation, such as necklaces made from shell beads.
The sorts of beads used by modern humans, and the ornaments they fashioned from them, vary geographically. This is often interpreted as a sign of ethnic and cultural diversity among humans, and a means of symbolically binding groups and differentiating them from others. D鈥橢rrico suggests that the same holds true for Neanderthals.
Other researchers agree, and point to a double standard of some researchers in interpreting the archaeological record, including evidence of burials, care of the infirm and social cooperation.
鈥業nferior ability鈥�
鈥淪ome archaeologists are happy to associate these same features with language if they occur with modern humans, but are not willing to associate them with language among the Neanderthals,鈥� says anthropologist of Washington University in St Louis, US.
鈥淭he double standard doesn鈥檛 work 鈥� if they reflect language in one, they must reflect in it both.鈥�
However, even if Neanderthals had language capabilities, that does not mean they spoke in the same way as humans.
鈥淭he archaeological record does not show that they ever attained the cultural level of the humans who could talk as we do,鈥� says , a linguist at Brown University, Rhode Island, US.
鈥淣eanderthals possessed language, but their linguistic and cognitive ability was inferior to the humans who replaced them,鈥� he says.
