60,000-year-old skeleton shows primitive man could talk

60,000-year-old skeleton shows primitive man could talk 

TEL AVIV- Archaeologists in Israel have unearthed a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal skeleton that indicates, for the first time, that the primitive hominids were anatomically able to talk. 

Elsewhere in Israel, other scientists have turned up the skeleton ot a more advanced hominid who was anatomlcally identical to present-day humans but who, paradoxicaliy, lived 30,00 years betore the Ne-anderthal. 

Thls tind seems to con firma similar discovery tast year whose validity and meaning have been questloned. 

Together, the two most recent discoveries appear to answer some questions 

about human origins white raising others. 

Among the tantalising possibdies is that Nean· derthal man and the more advanced, anatomically modern human could talk to cach other. 

The latest Neanderthal discovery, made at Kebara cave In Israel by Israell and French scientists, 1s that of a skeleton containing a thyoid bone, which les between the chin and Тагупх. 

The small, U-shaped bone anchors the muscles that move the tongue, lower jaw and larynx. 

Never before had a Neanderthal skeleton been found with this key bone in place, sald Dr Baruch Arensburg of the Department of Anatomy and Anthropology at Tel Aviy University.

Dr Arensburg is the chlet author of a paper de-scribing the discovery in Thursday's issue of the British journal, Nature. 

In shape, size and posi-ton, he said, the Neander-thal hyoid bone is identical to that of modern humans and indicates that the anatomy of speech was the same in both, and that they could speak in the same way. 

Whether they actually did is still unknown, Dr Arensburg and other sclen-tists say, because it is un knoWn whether the Neanderthal braln could handle speech.- NYT.