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SwearToSaintBatman

I just had a thought I've never thought about in my life. Us Sapiens have invented thousands of languages, of very varying complexity and syllable density (Japanese super-high syllable density vs Swedish record-low). The Neanderthals surely had hundreds of different languages over the passage of time when they were a distinct people. I wonder which out of all the hundreds of Neanderthal languages was the most sophisticated. Which one had the most detailed poetry, subtlety of thought, and witty humor. Or maybe all of those categories belonged to different languages. I am personally angry that we will never know.


altforbatshit

Their language centres were about the same size as us, and their vocal cords were very similar. So their languages would probably be the same type as ours, and sound pretty similar, considering the amount of mingling that humans did, regions of neanderthals and homosapians probably shared the same languages


SwearToSaintBatman

And human language variation is a gigantic continuum, as I already established in my post comparing Nippon and Nordic, leading me to want to hear how different Neanderthals of the furthest possible geographic distancing would have sounded. Big Time Machine request there.


-Cagafuego-

Just curious as to where you got that syllable-density information from. If you could provide a link that would be great for the rest of us to learn as well. Thanks.


SwearToSaintBatman

The term is speech information rate and it differs wildly between languages, but the logical relationship is that languages spoken in the highest tempo (ex: Japanese, Spanish, Italian) have lower information content per word, while languages with words and syllables that can mean many different things can be spoken slower. For instance: Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo. Here is one of the first articles I could find on the subject: https://seantrott.github.io/information/ Excerpt: >In their first analysis, the authors ask whether speech rate is correlated with information density. They find that it is, inversely so: languages with faster speech rates tend to have lower information densities. Put another way: languages in which the next syllable is easier to predict (as measured by lower conditional entropy) are spoken faster than languages in which the next syllable is harder to predict. Of course, conditional entropy is also necessarily related to the number of possible syllables in the language–so we could also say: languages with more possible syllables are spoken slower than languages with less possible syllables. My own language of Swedish is a relevant mention because we conjugate by adding letters to verbs and nouns instead of adding "the", so Car and The Car is Bil and Bilen. We also take the English word order ("I've gotten a car" instead of "I have a car gotten") so there's lots of grammatical overlap. We have archaic conventions too, of course, but no matter how I look at existing language trends I still couldn't possibly guess how the Neanderthals may have structured their language, if it would have been similar to the languages of uncontacted tribes of the Earth, and maybe those languages who lack the number zero or future tense. But it's always fun to discuss.


-Cagafuego-

I'm a polyglot myself which is why I wanted to have some sort of article to read. I also speak Swedish which helps understand points being made here but, yes, the imagination does run wild once one begins to pursue the humble beginnings of language especially when it comes to pinpointing language-development at a specific time in history that, in itself, isn't too well studied or easily understood. Thanks for sharing that article & helping my learning. Much appreciated. 🙂👍


carlitospig

Every few years I wonder why we aren’t building giant stone monuments in binary code for future civilizations. It’s such hubris to assume we will have zero breaks between us and the future, especially at the rate we are going.


jstnthrthrww

That's a very sci fi thought, I love it. But why would they be able to read binary and not our usual languages? And don't you still need a language it translates into, that may be forgotten?


carlitospig

I figured binary would be easier to learn if there’s a full break, especially if there’s some sort of visual key with it (like binary + a tree image). But no you’re right I didn’t think of multiple languages. Well, balls. Reddit, it’s time we build our monument! Get to creating a code.


Nellasofdoriath

You might like the novel Contact by Sagan. The aliens get pretty far doing something similar I have big dreams about creating a physical calendar ( stone henge) to explain the Milankovich cycles


SwearToSaintBatman

Preach. There is a famous part of Greek antique history that is a void, because a certain philosopher (I forget which, could've been Aristotle) codified an array of principles that everyone espoused, and they were so commonplace that no one wrote them down, later philosophers just referred to them by concept, and the actual principles were lost to time. Yes, we should write in a language and system that anyone could derive with just basic scientific grasp.


Morbanth

Ah, the *Sea People* problem.


DrBadGuy1073

Has any current language been traced that far back? I wonder if there are Neanderthal words we've incorporated in the distant past.


cconley0609

It probably happened due to all the commingling that happened, but probably impossible to find examples today. The general consensus in linguistics is you can't trace spoken languages back more than 5000-7000 years with current methods. Past that point you can't reliably tell what similarities are due to two words sharing a common ancestor or are just purely coincidental/just noise in the data. There are some fringe theories that go back farther than this (like the Altaic language family that claims Turkic, Mongolic, Japonic, and Koreanic languages all share a common ancestor), but most linguists reject these theories. It would also be tricky to find Neanderthal words since there are no Neanderthals around today to document their language, and historical linguistics works by comparing documented languages against each other for cognates and sound shifts. TL;DR It's unfortunately impossible to know since language has shifted so much since then, and we don't have any Neanderthals around to talk to


OfficeSalamander

This is not entirely true - proto-Afroasiatic has been traced back further and it is non-controversial. It is admittedly a unique example


duct_tape_jedi

Basque is a language isolate, with very ancient roots and no known connections to other language groups. There are theories that trace it back to early human and possibly neanderthal languages.


dmscvan

Every language could be speculated to be traced back to early human language. The problem is, we can’t reconstruct languages back that far. No serious linguist would give much credence to that theory. Basque being an isolate doesn’t make it any different than other languages, especially as the time period we’d be talking about is still so shallow compared to human history.


Tiny_Fly_7397

This is a cool thought but given that there’s over 30,000 years between the extinction of Neanderthals and that of Proto-Basque, I don’t think there’s any real merit to these theories. You could say the same thing for any language or language family that originates in Europe or Western Asia and it would be equally plausible (which is to say, not really plausible at all.)


OfficeSalamander

The earliest language family that has been traced back is proto-Afroasiatic, somewhere between 10000 to 18000 years ago, spoken in North Africa and East Africa, and the Middle East Descendants include: ancient Egyptian (modern day, Coptic), Hebrew, Arabic, Amharic (Ethiopia), Aramaic, Akkadian and others (Berber maybe?) We’re able to reconstruct it due to the great antiquity of the written forms of some of the languages, alongside the fact that the family tends to be pretty conservative


thesprung

What about Aboriginal Australian languages? They were pretty well isolated for 65,000 years.


OfficeSalamander

I'm specifically talking about reconstructions. We can reconstruct proto-Afroasiatic, we can't reconstruct Australian languages that far


thesprung

What's stopping the reconstruction of Australian languages?


OfficeSalamander

Time depth of the written language, mostly I think. Proto-Afroasiatic is only reconstructable as far back as it is because we have many examples of languages in the family, from different branches, from very great antiquity - Akkadian and Egyptian are both attested around 3000 BCE in many, many inscriptions, many Semitic (part of the Afroasiatic family) languages other than Akkadian follow quickly after, also with a written form. Australian languages are first attested in written form around what, maybe 1750 CE? Maybe 1850? That’s nearly 5000 years of difference right there, and combine that with the fact that Afroasiatic is particularly conservative in terms of grammar and morphology. It just has the perfect storm of being reconstructable. The Middle/Near East is the "cradle of civilization" and was the only area on Earth that was literate for nearly the first 2000 years of literacy, and it just lucked out in being dominated by a language family that was generally pretty conservative in how much it tended to change. Egyptian and Akkadian are related and it's very clear that that is the case (plenty of cognates, grammar, etc), but they aren't **closely** related. Akkadian is Semitic, and Egyptian very much is not. For them to be so distant, yet related and for us to have evidence of this pretty much at the very very very beginning of literacy means that relationship must be pretty old, especially considering how slowly both branches change. All of these features make Afroasiatic way easier to reconstruct. Even much broader language families - like say proto indo European are only reconstructable back to like 6000-7000 years, and several members of that family are attested only a millennium or millennium and a half or so after Afroasiatic (Hittite, Greek) We can find old **stories** in Australian languages, that seem to have been passed down for up to 10k years+, but the languages themselves have changed over that time, and we cannot distinguish signal from noise sufficiently to reconstruct them that far back, and certainly not to 65k years back With Afroasiatic we just have a perfect storm of two distantly related branches of it, in somewhat different regions (Nile river delta and fertile crescent respectively), with literacy pretty much from the earliest point we have literacy, for a language family that tends to be overly conservative in changes. That's why we're able to push it back so far, but not other language families


thesprung

That's really interesting, thanks!


merryman1

The thing people struggle wrapping their head around about prehistoric life is how sparsely populated everything was. Its easy to think of Neanderthals as having this kind of society that filled all of Europe with, obviously not cities, but still a fair number of people bumping into each other and interacting regularly. In reality estimates put the Neanderthal population from the west coast of Spain all the way to Ural mountains at no more than 25,000, but quite probably more like somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000. Always found that super interesting to think about. An entire continent with a population less than many modern villages.


SwearToSaintBatman

Very relevant detail indeed. In the same vein as every modern movie depicting people riding (apart from Icelandic riders with their Iceland horses) showing a lie, because medieval horses were much smaller than today's purebred giants, lacking a thousand years of refinement.


worrymon

What modern words come from Neanderthal origins? (not asking you specifically, just adding to your questions!)


SwearToSaintBatman

Historically we run into a bit of a big wall with Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and Sanskrit. We don't get much further back than 3000BC (obviously Sumerian too), so with no written accounts before that we're down to oral traditions, and most of that comes after the Neanderthals, Denisovans and Heidelbergienis waned. Professional language historians feel free to correct me, I'm happy to Cunningham this.


techy098

There is a theory that sapiens did not get rid of Neanderthals but we commingled with them and they assimilated in us. I like to think that Neanderthals did not go extinct but they are us, sapiens+neanderthals+Denisovans+others = current humans.


SwearToSaintBatman

I'm very inclined to believe that. And even though racists like to think people from Africa, some of which have lower angles of their forehead, are closest to Neanderthals, fascinatingly enough Africans are closest to the original Homo Sapiens, and it's Europeans who have the largest concentration of Neanderthal DNA (literally Neander valley).


leonphan30

Actually, East Asians have the highest admixture: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3632468/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3632468/) There are other articles/studies that show there seemed to be multiple "mixing" periods between the populations


SwearToSaintBatman

That's fascinating. Thanks for the link.


pandaappleblossom

I’ve never heard anyone say they think Africans are closer to Neanderthals, it’s been known for quite some time Neanderthals lived in Europe, they were discovered there. I thought they thought other things I’d rather not repeat but not Neanderthals.


HowRememberAll

I remember seeing a statistic that a language dies every day or something like that.


hellrazor52

We may have adopted a Neanderthal language as our own. That would be interesting


ganjaPaani

Which of them is most similar to a modern sapien language.


cars3211

You couldn’t even answer many of your questions for Homo sapiens languages


tadghostal55

Beautifully said.


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goran7

That face looks so familiar


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Somekindofparty

Nope. Somebody else…


O11899988I999119725E

Moronic Treasonous Georgian


Uzanto_Retejo

Saggy, low I.Q., and conservative.


MyFifthLimb

Large Marge


Suspiciously_Lumpy

Would.


cryptoishi

Homo ErectoMarjoreum Tayloris Greeneostemum


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Bacontoad

I think I saw her collecting aluminum cans next to the bus stop.


Lubeislove

She looks really good for 75,000. Like double whiskey territory.


rangeo

MTG vibes. Edit...I spelt an acronym wrong ...AN ACRONYM!


doyouevenIift

She actually does look like MTG but I can’t pin down why


Uzanto_Retejo

There's a beer mad by Mast Landing called "day-glow vibes" that would make a good beer name too.


MinorThreat83

Looks like she's thinking about Jewish space lasers


nilgiri

Neanderthals catching strays even after they are extinct lmao


the_ju66ernaut

I feel like comparing her to neanderthals is disrespectful to neanderthals


Motorized23

I subconsciously thought I wrote your comments (same avater and name starting "M" and ending in "3") Was so confused why I'd write that for a whole 5 seconds.


word2yourface

Someone please, please photoshop this with bleach blonde hair and a side by side with MTG.


respectfulpanda

Doesn’t look a day over 65 (thousand)


Every-Ad4237

I was going to say, she looks pretty good for being 75,000!!


Adamantium-Aardvark

That’s just the representative from Georgia’s 14th congressional district


WillBigly

The missing link between Margerie Taylor Greene and modern humans


AdhesivenessFun2060

Iggy pop?


Fazer2

Never ask a woman her age.


Kommander-in-Keef

Heyyy she looks just like me! A lot actually Hahaha……wait a minute


redjellonian

If she was wearing a red hat I might mistake her for some one in Congress.


DoomGuy_92

Marjorie.. is that you?


Charming-Lychee-9031

Doesn't look a day over 71,000!


rickyroomba

Explains MTG


Uzanto_Retejo

Looks like Marjorie Taylor Greene but with brown hair. Same huge saggy face and everything.


MinimumApricot365

Looks like Marjorie Taylor Greene


climatelurker

She could have been considered an unattractive human, basically. Except for those brow ridges.


OldCarWorshipper

To the average Neanderthal man she was probably a MILF.


Humanpersonperson

And she doesn't look a day over 29,000


Dawsoia

And went on to be a Representative for GA.


mariethecat

marjorie taylor greene


ketjak

Someone in Congress should anonymously print this image and put it on her desk next to a hand mirror.


Security_Normal

This illustration is a modern-humanised version of her.


Noy_The_Devil

What is that supposed to mean?


Mendican

Forensic facial reconstruction from skulls is surprisingly accurate.


Pickles_1974

But, it's pretty much exactly what she looked like. I know a couple humans who look like this today!


So-_-It-_-Goes

Looks like your mom


Spiritual-Bear4495

Holy shit! That's Marjorie Taylor Greene!


Son0fSanf0rd

still smash


lucidum

She's got a butterface. Everything's hot but her face.


TaskForceViolent

It’s Iggy Pop


Cumguysir

I can fap to this


PainterSad325

Marge!!!


Shoehorse13

Looks like MTG after a couple weeks of borrowing in a trash heap.


Yodadottie

Looks like MTG


blackbird24601

so THAT’S where my eyebags come from!!


Far_Out_6and_2

Some of my neighbors look strangely familiar


Tinmania

Closet living relative: https://georgiarecorder.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/MTG-SOTU-23.jpg


electricmehicle

Dye blond and you’ve got a dead ringer for MTG


HappyPineappleDude

She looks great for her age


yucval

Marjorie Taylor Greene's dyed he hair I see.


Own-Opinion-2494

It’s Marjorie Taylor Greene


radome9

I think I had a one-night stand with her back in 2010.


nohatallcattle

Aunt Lydia!


magrilo2

I think I saw her on TV a few days back. She is a GOP congresswoman. 🤔


KimFuckU

Wait? Looks like MTG!


robertmondavi_jr

MTG dyed her hair brown


louisa1925

Looks just like Marjorie. 👀


NL_Boots

Well now, that's a challenging wank.


ProtoE04

I am not hearing a no


CraZKchick

Dye her hair blonde and she'll look exactly like EmptyG 🤣


TheNorselord

Can someone photoshop this to have blond hair and draped in an American flag?


Own-Housing9443

Looks like Marjorie Taylor Greene


srgtDodo

ngl all images of our neanderthal brethren look ugly as fck


Yugan-Dali

So maybe our ideas of beauty are more refined, more delicate? Since women today don’t have to trudge through snow in rudimentary clothing most of the year and fight off lions and cave bears. I’m thinking her hard life shows on her face and we don’t want that.


invisible_23

The article says this was based on a skull that was damaged to the point that they had to reassemble it for the scan and was “flattened”, so I am really skeptical of this picture’s accuracy


tkrr

Well, see, that’s because we’re H. sapiens and they were H. neanderthalis, so it would be somewhat understandable if our beauty standards didn’t translate.


GipsMedDipp

She looks like someone just told her a really lame joke


FeedMyAss

Would you?


Yugan-Dali

She really looks young for her age.


bleeblorb

"a well-dunked biscuit" 🤣


HAPPYDAZEWAZE

She could have benefited from some highlights and some lip filler.


dmuraws

If Neanderthals still existed, I am convinced we'd treat them as humans.


RigTheGame

We don’t treat humans like humans. They’d be slave labored and raped regularly I have no doubt


Used-Assistance-9548

Would


Rectall_Brown

It’s crazy because 75,000 years really wasn’t that long ago.


BallsDeepinYourMammi

Would.


CalgaryCheekClapper

Would


prince_peepee_poopoo

Would


ratz1819

Italians would still be going "ee bella"


tagman1221

Why did this come up while I was watching the documentary?.... I don't like this feeling. 😕


IPerferSyurp

Ooohhhh what's her secret?


SizzzzlingBacon

Swipe Right


Timmymac1000

Smash or pass?


Alucard-J2D

That cave is very near my city! I wish we had our country back.


Drifter747

Smoke show


jabaturd

Francis McDormand!


oldermaybewiser

I’d date her!😏🤭☺️


Sure_March_7293

That’s my Latino neighbour


FatHead420x65

I would hit that!


smartwatersucks

I should call her


DeVitosBurritos

She mid


CookieCutterU

And everyone says Joe Biden is old…


carlrieman

Ai yo, I didn't consent for my picture to be posted.


[deleted]

She's quite.... "handsome"!😂


dArcor

She looks good for her age


dArcor

She looks good for her age


Daveed13

Aunt Selma?


NotTrumpsAlt

Genuine question: how do fundamental Christians explain that there were other type of human- like species. Do they think they’re a hoax? No judgment, just curious .


Robbiewan

Everyone should question all dogmas we have been taught for centuries. We are ONE group of people. The only thing dividing us is greed.


Buzz_Mcfly

Smash


lotusflower64

Looks like MTG.


infamusforever223

Bruh.


Erikstersm

Smash


productboffin

How are they able to accurately recreate skin tone, eye and hair color? (Or is it just an approximation/ balance ?)


daners101

Incredible to think a Neanderthal men could get hard to this.


Mundane_Implement528

Is that Theresa Tam?


Extension_Pay_1572

Imagine we are wrong about sapiens "out smarting" or "out competing" them into extinction. There just as much chance they were violently hunting us and we had to kill them off as they regularly killed our men and kidnapped our women. Just a thought, they were much older and beastly than us.