Ancient Teeth Show Neanderthals Were Righties

Right-handedness reaches back a half million years in the human evolutionary family, at least if scratched-up fossil teeth have anything to say about it.

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Image: Under extreme magnification, stone-tool marks consistent with right-handedness appear on the surface of a 500,000-year-old hominid tooth, left. Most red-highlighted scratches on the outer surface of a 30,000-year-old Neanderthal tooth, right, also signify right-handedness.

Stone-tool scratches on the front teeth of Neanderthals and their presumed European ancestors occur at angles denoting right-handedness in most of these Stone Age hominids, just as in human populations today, say anthropologist David Frayer of the University of Kansas in Lawrence and his colleagues.

Scientists have linked prevalent right-handedness in human populations to a left-brain hemisphere that controls right-sided body movements and enables critical language functions. Given the new tooth evidence, populations of largely right-handed Neanderthals and their predecessors must have possessed a gift for gab

Along with widespread right-handedness indicating that these ancient hominids possessed language-ready brains, humanlike inner-ear fossils show that Neanderthals’ ancestors could hear all the sounds employed in modern tongues. Other researchers contend that, based on vocal-tract reconstructions informed by skull and upper-body fossils, Neanderthals were physically incapable of articulating some modern speech sounds. In these scientists’ view, language as spoken today originated in Homo sapiens sometime after 200,000 years ago.

Source: www.wired.com...

I just love this stuff. Forensic Evidence Evaluation. "if I could do my life over...." lol

Just some great work and proving our back grounds. I think it is cool how they determined what types of speech they could do then and what developed etc.

I wish we could watch history like a big DVD player etc.

If I could go back in time (safely) I would love to go back then and to finally know what it really was like. Maybe even bring back a speciment or two. I guess this desire stems from the growing up days of the Sleezstacks andthe Land of the Lost.
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jingle anyones memory???

Sorry, already posted here on ATS

Originally posted by Blackmarketeer
Sorry, already posted here on ATS

Indeed, so please post your comments in the earlier thread.

Closed.