Re: [tied] Neanderthal Words

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 49176
Date: 2007-06-26

On 2007-06-26 23:33, rdfuerle wrote:

> I am working on a book on human evolution. Humans and Neanderthals
> co-existed in Europe from about 46,000 to 24,500 years ago.
> Neanderthals had a hyoid bone and are believed to have had a language.
> Thus, there is a possibility that some Neanderthal words entered the
> Indo-European language.

By no stretch of the imagination. The age of the Indo-European family is
just about 5-8 thousand years. PIE was the language of a late Neolithic
society that lived many, many millennia after the death of the last
Neanderthal.

> Does anyone know of any words that might be
> candidates?

Of course Neanderthal words might have been borrowed into some form of
Proto-Proto-Proto-...-Proto-Indo-European, but since it's practically
impossible to locate the linguistic ancestors of modern language
families at such time depths, or to reconstruct any part of their
structure with any accuracy or confidence, there's no hope of
recognising "Neanderthal" loans in any language. Also, _if_ Neanderthals
used complex spoken language, it's extremely unlikely to have been _a_
language. One would expect instead a _type_ of communication, perhaps
resembling ours, perhaps different in some respects, but certainly
consisting of many distinct "languages" or "dialects".

Piotr