[blam]

GGG Ping.

[davisfh]

"Or is it purely a figment of the imagination of Steven Mithen, professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading in England?"

I think that you've nailed it, Michael.

[Red Badger]

The Singing Neanderthals...........Mick Jagger's ancestors?.......

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam. Another "I hear singing and there's no one there" topic. :')

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
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[SunkenCiv]

Neanderthals Sang Like Sopranos
ABC Science News | 3-15-2005 | Jennifer Viegas
Posted on 03/15/2005 8:34:39 PM EST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1363597/posts

High notes of the singing Neanderthals
http://www.timesonline.co.uk | 01/30/05 | Jonathan Leake
Posted on 01/30/2005 9:25:53 PM EST by K4Harty
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1332270/posts

Neanderthal Flute
Bob Fink | updated March 1998 | Bob Fink
Posted on 09/12/2005 12:12:33 AM EDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1482622/posts

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

something for your ping list?

[SunkenCiv]

High notes of the singing Neanderthals
http://www.timesonline.co.uk | 01/30/05 | Jonathan Leake
Posted on 01/30/2005 9:25:53 PM EST by K4Harty
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1332270/posts

Neanderthals Sang Like Sopranos
ABC Science News | 3-15-2005 | Jennifer Viegas
Posted on 03/15/2005 8:34:39 PM EST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1363597/posts

[SunkenCiv]

just an update to a cool topic:

The Singing Neanderthals
by Steven Mithen
reviewed by Brian Lynch

The Singing Neanderthals theorizes, for example, that in the millennia before the emergence of anything like words or grammar, language and music were one and the same, consisting of tonal utterances that allowed the earliest humans to communicate. Even now, Mithen says, we hear echoes of that musical proto-language whenever we follow the universal impulse to speak to infants in a singsong voice. (Versions of this impulse have even been detected in the willingness of Chinese-speaking parents to alter the important tonal qualities that are built in to all Chinese dialects.)

[RightWhale]

Music is poetry; poetry is music. Poetry is how they passed down the old stories before writing existed since poetry has rhythm and meter and is easier to remember and harder to get it wrong and forget or change important stuff.

[Dustbunny]

I love this guys imagination.

[tomzz]

Gorillas and chimps can be taught to communicate using deaf signing conventions but they cannot be taught to speak English, and that's because they do not have voluntary control over breathing likie we do. Koko, the first gorilla taught to sign, is said to have an understood vocabulary of thousands of English words and understands English speech, but she cannot speak it. The same could easily have been true of neanderthals.

Modern humans have voluntary control over breathing since we apparently originated in water, and control over breathing is a necessary adaptation for swimming.

[dirtboy]

It was a dark and stormy night, and in a cave in what is now southern France, Neanderthals were singing, dancing and tapping on stalagmites with their fingernails to pass the time.

Can't be worse than most of the hypersexual crap that passes for music nowadays. We evolved from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens, but a certain element of our population seems to want to devolve to Homo priapism.