• Question: How did the cavemen communicate or even understand each other without a proper language?

    Asked by sugarfufa to Andy, Diana, James, Mary Jane, Wil on 14 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Wilhelmiina Toivo

      Wilhelmiina Toivo answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      Animals understand each other even though they don’t have a spoken language – species tend to have a form of communication because it helps them stay alive . So this same thing applies to cavemen, they will have communicated non-verbally before actual language appeared. It is quite debated how human language came about and there are several explanations to this. In general theorists think it emerged gradually in the course of human evolution from our ancestors ways of communicating.

    • Photo: Diana Kornbrot

      Diana Kornbrot answered on 14 Mar 2017:

      what makes you think cave dwellers did not have ‘proper’ language.
      Its one of the great frustrations of archaelology that language leaves not trace
      BUT
      Neanderthatls, denisovians and other homo sapiens near relatives show evidence of the same language genes as humans. Genetic evidence suggest they interbred and its hard to imagine taking a mate wo did not have language! would you?
      Even eaelier hominids have the human language form of one gene foxp2
      http://news.mit.edu/2014/language-gene-0915

    • Photo: Andrew Jones

      Andrew Jones answered on 16 Mar 2017:

      cave paintings!?

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