Comments on: What Did Australopithecines Sound Like? More "Duh" Than "Ugg"

By: Jacob

Jacob — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:43:14 +0000

Yeah, American Southerners don’t distinguish between the short e and i sounds. We pronounce pen and pin, tin and ten exactly alike. I’ve tried making the short e sounds in those words and I end up just saying pan and tan. Are we Australopithecus afarensis?

By: Iain

Iain — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 22:47:07 +0000

So if duh was amongst the first words I doubt it would have been long before Hey duh! caught on. And of course the valley girl no duh must have been some hot slang thrown around by the preteens. The more it changes the more it stays the same.

By: Jack Dodd

Jack Dodd — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 02:47:07 +0000

Sounds just like modern US teenagers… only a couple of vowel sounds emitted, primarily “uh”.

By: kamran the great

kamran the great — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 23:26:06 +0000

@ g wilkins … was your friend a new zealander?

By: G Wilkins

G Wilkins — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 17:19:51 +0000

Actually “ten” and “tin” can be hard to tell apart among us modern humans as well. A friend once said to me, “Look at the tint outside.”
“Tint?”
“The big white thing on the lawn.”
“You mean the tent?”
“That’s what I said!”

By: Great Ape

Great Ape — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:54:22 +0000

Hi Michelle, they’re not proposing that Australopithecus afarensis had limited communication abilities, just that they communicated using a particular range of vocalisations rather than another particular range of vocalisations. Generally, it would be regarded in the discipline that the other great apes (especially chimpanzees) have good communication abilities, with chimps and gorillas in captivity able to use sign language and glyph based communication, as well as other types of body language and animal communication. Human ancestors or near ancestors, such as the Australopithecines can certainly be expected to have had as good, or probably better, communication abilities than chimpanzees, so this is really an exploration into what type of voice they had.

By: James Maine

James Maine — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 12:48:33 +0000

So the Simpsons had it correct.

By: megan

megan — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:19:21 +0000

Also which hominid ancestor had the FOXP2 adaptation that is found to linked to modern speech and talking. That parrots have been found to have a version which could explain their ability to use their tongues so well to mimic humans and make calls and noises for communication to one another.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 01:18:59 +0000

Considering how complex the communication abilities of animals are, I suspect the scientists are once again over-simplifying the abilities of human ancestors…their paradigm is limited by pre-conceptions.