Illustration: a Homo sapiens holds the skull of a Homo neanderthalensis.

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MARY EVANS / SIPA

Neanderthals had a hearing system as fine as ours, according to a scientific study, which sees this as further proof that Homo sapiens' cousin had a communication capacity as effective as the latter.

Neanderthal cognitive abilities have long divided paleoanthropologists, with some arguing that only Homo sapiens, our species, developed the ability to design symbols and communicate them by merging the equivalent of words.

The team of anthropologists led by Professor Mercedes Conde-Valverde, specialist in bioacoustics, at the Spanish University of Alcalà, recalls that archeology documents more and more "complex behaviors in Neanderthals".

We know today that like Homo sapiens, this human line whose last representatives disappeared around 40,000 years ago, knew how to bury its dead, but also to ornament bodies or manufacture sophisticated tools.

"Articulated language"

As the French paleoanthropologist Bruno Maureille remarks, our ancestors shared "with other human lineages - different from us by their morphology [like Neanderthals] - the same capacities to produce and share symbolic activities".

The simple fact of producing tools implies cognitive capacities, "which translate an articulated language at least similar, very close to ours", according to him.

To determine if Neanderthals could use a language, it is necessary to establish if it could symbolize concepts.

And if he had the anatomical capacity to produce and perceive a language to convey them, according to the authors of the study, published in

Nature ecology and evolution.

Same hearing abilities as Homo sapiens

To do this, they virtually reconstructed the external and median auditory canals of five specimens of the Neanderthal species that lived over a period ranging from 130,000 to about 45,000 years ago.

They then derived values ​​measuring their ability to capture sounds and especially their frequency range, that is to say their extent.

However, "the larger it is, the more it allows the use of various sounds, and the more effective the communication", explains Prof. Conde-Valverde.

They then compared these values ​​to those of two groups of individuals.

Modern humans, and the first ancestors of the Neanderthals, many of whom have been found in Sima de los Huesos, the "cave of bones", located in northern Spain and dated to -430,000 years ago.

Their conclusion is that Neanderthals shared the same hearing abilities as Homo sapiens, and in particular that of perceiving sounds of higher frequency than those of his ancestors.

These high frequencies are associated with the production of consonants, an important characteristic of human language, distinguishing it from the mode of communication of chimpanzees, and almost all mammals, based largely on vowels.

The study points out that consonants "are particularly important in determining the meaning of words."

"Cautious approach"

She deduced that if the Neanderthal's ear had developed to grasp them, it was because he knew how to produce them.

And concludes the existence of a "voice communication system as complex and efficient as human language".

According to Prof. Conde-Valverde, he “was able to transmit oral information quickly and with a very low error rate”.

She even thinks that "if we listened to two Neanderthal men speaking behind a curtain, without being able to see them, we would think we were dealing with people from another country speaking a foreign language."

Antoine Balzeau, paleoanthropologist at the National Museum of Natural History, describes the scientific article as “interesting, with a cautious approach” from the authors.

In particular, he takes up their suggestion to “compare these results with those of ancient Homo sapiens”.

And suggests that ultimately, even more than biology, or genetics, the key to understanding the Neanderthal universe is in its "cultural aspects, which are really important."

Quite simply because we are there at levels of concepts implying their transmission, and therefore “we are able to emit a few sounds to make groups of words”.

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