Summary Of The Talking Neanderthals

Source 2:

Johansson, S. (2013). The talking Neanderthals: What do fossils, genetics, and archeology say?. Biolinguistics, 7, 35-74.

Synopsis of Article:

This article explores Neanderthal cognition through speech. The author gives definition about what language is and how is it formed in the first half of the article. Then Johansson discusses Neanderthal speech ability. He concluded that Neanderthal did have the ability to voluntarily speak, but he could not definitively conclude on how much and whether or not they actually spoke a language or just made grammatical sounds. His conclusion is based on archaeological evidence such as one Neanderthal hyoid bone being and genetic evidence that is like to the capability of producing speech.

The genetic evidence is FOXP2 or known as the “language gene.” Johansson noted that there are more genes to language development in the brain, but this is a unique one that pertains to only vocalized speech. Through this kind of support and more throughout the article, Johansson concluded that Neanderthals had the cognitive ability to produce some sort of speech.
Pertaining to Research Topic and Biological Anthropology:
I found this article particularly interesting for a couple of reasons. (1) It could serve as an example to help me develop my research topic, and (2) I learned that there is a specific gene that is known as the language gene. I did not know that a person can conclude on a paleo-species ability to do something through one specific gene that is particularly unique to that ability like speech. I feel that this article has given me a clear picture of what potentially was going on inside the Neanderthal’s head. However, as Johansson mentioned that some of the archaeological evidence it lacking because there has not been a lot found, and that FOXP2 gene may have caused too much hype when it was discovered because in biological terms there is no one gene for a unique ability like speaking. This article crosses almost the entire anthropological spectrum. It has linguistic anthropology (figuring out Neanderthal speech), biological anthropology (looks into the genes of the bones that have been found) and archaeology. However, I should focus on the genetic side of the article because genetics is a main topic of research in biological anthropology.