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The Funk of Forty Thirty Thousand Years

From The Times:

April 17, 2008
Scientists hark back 30,000 years to give Neanderthal Man a voice

The voice of Neanderthal Man has been synthesised 30,000 years after the human relatives became extinct.

Scientists in the US have used a reconstruction of the larynx of Homo neanderthalis and computer models to mimic the way that the species probably spoke. Only one sound ? the ?e? ? has been generated so far, which seems strangulated and nasal in comparison with its human equivalent.

The explanation lives here.
Brave words indeed from a bunch of guys who think that humans are descended from rocks.
Of course, even if they succeed in reproducing the sounds that came out of the larynxes of our noble ancestors, they still won't have anything close to their language.
King Tutankhamen, late Pharoah of Egypt, had an anatomical structure similar to ours today. Are they suggesting that computer modeling of his head would give us the sound and syntax of ancient Egyptian? It seems unlikely to us. Knowing that a person can make certain sounds tells us nothing about how those sounds were actually used. There are many sounds that humans are perfectly capable of making, but that don't occur in particular languages. And even if it were possible to exclude sounds that were never used in the tongue of the Neanderthals, there remains the problem of reconstructing their vocabulary, something for which they left no written records.
If they insist on going ahead and computer-generating a complete sentence as spoken 30,000 years ago, (something out of the Far Side, perhaps) we think the best they can do will be to come up with an English sentence, spoken with what they think sounds like a Neanderthal accent.
[N.B. Those of us old enough to have voted for Ronald Reagan (twice) will recall that the late Vincent Price read the lines:

The Foulest Stench Is In The Air
The Funk Of Forty Thousand Years

in Michael Jackson's Thriller video. A more contemporary exegesis lives here.]

Full post as published by West Neanderthal Drive on April 18, 2008 (boomark / email).