It’s clear from the wealth of archaeological artefacts left by Neanderthals, as well as anatomical evidence (e.g. similar vocal anatomy) and known cognitive abilities, that they could speak and effectively communicate with one another.
How else would the group living at Grotte du Lazaret in France have coordinated the hunting and curing of so many animals?
- They interbred – but could humans and neanderthals actually talk to each other?
- Is the human race truly one species or the lovechild of various prehistoric hook-ups? Just how interbred are we?
However, to find out just how well Neanderthals could speak, researchers have had to look deep into their genetic code. A study published in April, 2026, found that Neanderthals had the same genetic hardware for language that Homo sapiens do, and that our lineage’s language-learning abilities may have developed a long time before we diverged from one another.
- "They wore clothes, wielded fire, and created art; they may have even been smarter than us..." Just who were our closest cousins?
- 50,000 years ago, on an island in the Pacific Ocean, there lived real-life hobbits – wait, what?
The researchers involved in this latest study investigated genomic regions known as ‘human ancestor quickly evolving regions’, or HAQERS. These aren’t genes, rather sequences that affect how and when certain genes are expressed, and they’ve been shown to have a large effect on human language development.
Neanderthals not only had HAQERS, but they were even more prominent than those found in humans today. This doesn’t mean Neanderthals definitely had language, or that it was more advanced than the languages of early Homo sapiens, but it does suggest the genetic hardware was there for it to develop.
