Neanderthal voice simulated
Updated on 17 April 2008
A Neanderthal voice has been heard for the first time in 30,000 years, simulated by scientists.
Researchers in the US used reconstructions of Neanderthal vocal tracts, based on skull shape, to mimic the way the extinct humans spoke.
A computerised sound synthesiser made the voice come to life.
So far the scientists have only engineered the sound of a Neanderthal saying "E" - but even this shows how differently the creatures spoke compared to modern humans.
Anthropologist Dr Robert McCarthy, who is leading the research at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, plans eventually to simulate an entire Neanderthal sentence.
He told New Scientist magazine the ancient humans lacked the "quantal vowel" sounds typical of modern speech.
The Neanderthal "E" does not have the quantal hallmark which helps a listener distinguish the word "beat" from "bit". This linguistic difference would have limited Neanderthal speech, according to Dr McCarthy.
"They would have spoken a bit differently," he said. "They wouldn't have been able to produce these quantal vowels that form the basis of spoken language."
In the 1970s, linguist Dr Phil Liberman, from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, US, inferred the dimensions of the larynx - or voice box - of a Neanderthal based on its skull. He concluded that Neanderthal speech did not have the subtlety of modern human speech.
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