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Cory Albrecht
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 Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 9:14 pm Post subject: Loud and Clear (Hearing of Homo heidelbergensis) |
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From the article
<http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/33933/title/Loud_and_clear>:
It may be time to rethink the stereotype of grunting, wordless
Neandertals. The prehistoric humans may have been quite chatty — at
least if the ear canals of their ancestors are any indication.
The findings suggest human speech may have originated earlier than some
researchers contend. Anthropologists disagree about whether language
sprang up rapidly around 50,000 years ago or emerged more gradually over
a longer period of time, says Rolf Quam, a paleoanthropologist at the
American Natural History Museum in New York and coauthor of the new study.
The auditory bones of 530,000-year-old skulls indicate that an early
human species called Homo heidelbergensis may have heard sounds much the
way people do today. H. heidelbergensis are thought to be an ancestor of
Neandertals. The findings could reignite debate about whether
Neandertals could speak, Quam and colleagues report. The study is the
first to use a fossil to reconstruct sensory perception in any Homo
species, they add.
The skulls are from a site in Atapuerca, Spain called Sima de los
Huesos, or “pit of the bones.” The Atapuerca research team, which
includes members from many disciplines and universities, used CT
scanning of the skulls to reconstruct the size and shape of the ear
canals, Quam says.
Read the rest at
<http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/33933/title/Loud_and_clear>. |
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r norman
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| Posted: Tue Jul 08, 2008 9:57 pm Post subject: Re: Loud and Clear (Hearing of Homo heidelbergensis) |
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On Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:14:13 -0400, Cory Albrecht
<coryalbrecht@hotmail.com> wrote:
| Quote: |
From the article
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/33933/title/Loud_and_clear>:
It may be time to rethink the stereotype of grunting, wordless
Neandertals. The prehistoric humans may have been quite chatty at
least if the ear canals of their ancestors are any indication.
The findings suggest human speech may have originated earlier than some
researchers contend. Anthropologists disagree about whether language
sprang up rapidly around 50,000 years ago or emerged more gradually over
a longer period of time, says Rolf Quam, a paleoanthropologist at the
American Natural History Museum in New York and coauthor of the new study.
The auditory bones of 530,000-year-old skulls indicate that an early
human species called Homo heidelbergensis may have heard sounds much the
way people do today. H. heidelbergensis are thought to be an ancestor of
Neandertals. The findings could reignite debate about whether
Neandertals could speak, Quam and colleagues report. The study is the
first to use a fossil to reconstruct sensory perception in any Homo
species, they add.
The skulls are from a site in Atapuerca, Spain called Sima de los
Huesos, or pit of the bones. The Atapuerca research team, which
includes members from many disciplines and universities, used CT
scanning of the skulls to reconstruct the size and shape of the ear
canals, Quam says.
Read the rest at
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/33933/title/Loud_and_clear>.
|
This is interesting but not completely convincing. The news release
has a graph that shows chimpanzees to have a hearing loss of perhaps 5
to 10 db in the frequency range of 2 to 4 kHz, the range in
consideration. That is really not that much of an impediment for
speech recognition. I have 80 db hearing loss at 4 kHz uncorrected
and more than 10 db with hearing aids. I do have some problems
hearing but it only affects my behavior in certain situations. And
there are enough environmental auditory cues in that frequency range
to make hearing it a useful feature which is why the human hearing
range is normally considered to extend to 20 kHz and why many mammals
have hearing extending out to well past that. The problem with the
origin of speech is generally considered (I thought) to be the problem
with production of the formant frequencies needed to distinguish
vowels. These do lie in the 1 to 4 kHz range but it is their
production, which requires special adaptations of the vocal tract, not
their reception which is the key limitation. |
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Steven L.
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 7:24 am Post subject: Re: Loud and Clear (Hearing of Homo heidelbergensis) |
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Cory Albrecht wrote:
| Quote: |
From the article
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/33933/title/Loud_and_clear>:
It may be time to rethink the stereotype of grunting, wordless
Neandertals. The prehistoric humans may have been quite chatty — at
least if the ear canals of their ancestors are any indication.
The findings suggest human speech may have originated earlier than some
researchers contend. Anthropologists disagree about whether language
sprang up rapidly around 50,000 years ago or emerged more gradually over
a longer period of time, says Rolf Quam, a paleoanthropologist at the
American Natural History Museum in New York and coauthor of the new study.
The auditory bones of 530,000-year-old skulls indicate that an early
human species called Homo heidelbergensis may have heard sounds much the
way people do today. H. heidelbergensis are thought to be an ancestor of
Neandertals. The findings could reignite debate about whether
Neandertals could speak, Quam and colleagues report. The study is the
first to use a fossil to reconstruct sensory perception in any Homo
species, they add.
The skulls are from a site in Atapuerca, Spain called Sima de los
Huesos, or “pit of the bones.” The Atapuerca research team, which
includes members from many disciplines and universities, used CT
scanning of the skulls to reconstruct the size and shape of the ear
canals, Quam says.
Read the rest at
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/33933/title/Loud_and_clear>.
|
I thought the major advance was the evolution of the mouth and larynx to
enable speaking of vowels and consonants, not hearing per se.
After all, dogs and cats can hear a wider frequency range than humans.
And sure enough, they can respond to many spoken human words. But they
can't speak any. And chimpanzee speech sounds like "Hee-hee hoo-hoo"
and such grunts, because they can't palatalize consonants.
Now having said that, there is some other paleontological evidence that
Neanderthals may have enjoyed singing. If so, then this improved
hearing in this article may be a reason why Neanderthals developed an
appreciation for music. There is some evidence that dogs can respond to
music, so there may be a connection between good hearing and music
appreciation.
But Neanderthals had to learn how to speak before they could learn how
to sing.
--
Steven L.
Email: sdlitvin@earthlinkNOSPAM.net
Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me. |
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Greg G.
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| Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 11:50 pm Post subject: Re: Loud and Clear (Hearing of Homo heidelbergensis) |
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On Jul 9, 6:39pm, Cory Albrecht <coryalbre...@hotmail.com> wrote:
| Quote: |
Steven L. wrote, On 08/07/08 10:24 PM:
Cory Albrecht wrote:
From the article
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/33933/title/Loud_and_clear>:
I thought the major advance was the evolution of the mouth and larynx to
enable speaking of vowels and consonants, not hearing per se.
The idea of the article, as I understood it, was that hearing developed
in concert with ability to vocalize. That this ear canal which was most
responsive at the frequencies of human speech would not have been so
without the concomitant ability to vocalize at those frequencies.
It's odd that so many people interpreted this article as saying that the
auditory capabilities of Homo heidelbergensis evolved in isolation from
every other ability when we know that never happens.
It's like all of you turned into a bunch of creationists asking how on
Earth the peacock could evolve a long tail that would make him easier to
catch and should thus be selected agains "if evolution were true".
After all, dogs and cats can hear a wider frequency range than humans.
And sure enough, they can respond to many spoken human words. But they
In my experience dogs and cats respond to tone and body language rather
than the actual words. For example, my cat will look guilty and go into
suck-up mode if I say "Supercallifragilistickexpialadocius" in that same
tone I normally say "Edmund... what do you think you're doing" when he's
trying to open the bottom cupboard doors in my kitchen.
|
Well, MY dog will look for a stick if I ask "Where's the stick?" If he
was playing with the stick and I ask "Where's your ball?" he would go
to the back yard to look for it, if that was the last place he had it.
Voice inflection doesn't matter unless it's a tone that worries him.
His grandmother was keen on balls and sticks but if I asked her
"Where's the bird?" she would look up into the tree. If I asked
"Where's the dead bird?" she still looked up.
But they still wag their tails when they get three of a kind when we
play poker. 80)
| Quote: |
[...snippage...]
But Neanderthals had to learn how to speak before they could learn how
to sing.
|
However, I would expect that the ancestors of parrots or ravens sang
before they could speak.
| Quote: |
And heard ability would have evolved along side the ability to vocalize
and both would have affected the other in feedback mode.
|
A former navy sonar man told me that sonar was designed to sound at
the frequency of the human voice because the ear was most sensitive at
that range. Consequently, he has some hearing loss now at that
frequency.
--
Greg G.
To become one with your computer is to reach a state of...
Nerdvana. |
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Cory Albrecht
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2008 3:39 am Post subject: Re: Loud and Clear (Hearing of Homo heidelbergensis) |
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Steven L. wrote, On 08/07/08 10:24 PM:
The idea of the article, as I understood it, was that hearing developed
in concert with ability to vocalize. That this ear canal which was most
responsive at the frequencies of human speech would not have been so
without the concomitant ability to vocalize at those frequencies.
It's odd that so many people interpreted this article as saying that the
auditory capabilities of Homo heidelbergensis evolved in isolation from
every other ability when we know that never happens.
It's like all of you turned into a bunch of creationists asking how on
Earth the peacock could evolve a long tail that would make him easier to
catch and should thus be selected agains "if evolution were true".
| Quote: |
After all, dogs and cats can hear a wider frequency range than humans.
And sure enough, they can respond to many spoken human words. But they
|
In my experience dogs and cats respond to tone and body language rather
than the actual words. For example, my cat will look guilty and go into
suck-up mode if I say "Supercallifragilistickexpialadocius" in that same
tone I normally say "Edmund... what do you think you're doing" when he's
trying to open the bottom cupboard doors in my kitchen.
[...snippage...]
| Quote: |
But Neanderthals had to learn how to speak before they could learn how
to sing.
|
And heard ability would have evolved along side the ability to vocalize
and both would have affected the other in feedback mode. |
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