""We suggest that if Neanderthals had something like modern speech and language, and that we did interact with them, then maybe mod languages have some trace of that language," Dr. Dan Dediu, psycholinguist and one of the study's lead authors, told The Huffington Post.
By pointing to ancient DNA and new archaeological discoveries, the linguists suggest that language developed through a gradual Darwinian process of both biological and cultural evolution -- rather than, as another popular theory states, through one or just a few random genetic mutations.
If this new theory is correct, the team's findings could push back the origins of modern language by 10 times what was previously thought."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/13/neanderthal-language-speech-modern-humans_n_3574556.html
Fascinating.
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