Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum Here for millennia, Humans and Neanderthals or Neanderthals
Speaker 1: if you prefer coexisted in Europe and Eurasia. You've probably
Speaker 1: heard about it because apparently they all had sex, and
Speaker 1: now you might have around two percent Neanderthal DNA in
Speaker 1: your genome. It's a whole thing. So we know there
Speaker 1: might have been some Neanderthal slash modern human romance. But
Speaker 1: did they have any laughs together? Well, that mostly depends
Speaker 1: on whether Neanderthals could laugh. It's a tricky question, though,
Speaker 1: because what would Neanderthals have laughed at. We modern humans
Speaker 1: laugh at all sorts of things. Depending on who you are.
Speaker 1: It's equally possible to defall at kitten's playing as it
Speaker 1: is to giggle over a pound about chemical engineering, if
Speaker 1: that's what you're into. We know even less about Neanderthal
Speaker 1: theory of mind than we do about our own, but
Speaker 1: there's evidence that the idea that they were intellectually inferior
Speaker 1: to modern humans is bogus. And though we don't rightly
Speaker 1: know what would have tickled them, A research on the
Speaker 1: evolution of laughter supports the idea that Neanderthals were most
Speaker 1: likely air to a glorious legacy of chuckles. That's because
Speaker 1: other great apes laugh. In fact, laughter in our phylogenetic
Speaker 1: corner of the world is estimated to have evolved between
Speaker 1: ten and sixteen million years ago. It most likely evolved
Speaker 1: from the labored breathing that happens when you're playing or
Speaker 1: being tickled. Spontaneous laughter is something we all do within
Speaker 1: the first couple months of life, even in babies born
Speaker 1: deaf or blind. The main goal of laughter seems to
Speaker 1: be to create and maintain social bonds. We know Neanderthals
Speaker 1: lived in small family groups, so although they might not
Speaker 1: have needed to have the social smarts to yuck it
Speaker 1: up at a comedy club, given their lifestyle, laughter probably
Speaker 1: would have been beneficial to them, just as it is
Speaker 1: to us or ape chimpanzee. But a lot goes into laughter,
Speaker 1: and the question of whether or not Neanderthals could laugh
Speaker 1: has two parts, the first having to do with the
Speaker 1: ability of the Neanderthal voice to produce the sound, and
Speaker 1: second with whether or not they have the cognitive ability
Speaker 1: to find things funny. According to Dr Philip Lieberman, Professor
Speaker 1: Emeritus in the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences
Speaker 1: at Brown College. Neanderthals definitely had all the vocal equipment
Speaker 1: required to laugh. Neanderthals had a vocal setup very similar
Speaker 1: to humans, a larynx or voice box, supported by a
Speaker 1: delicate horseshoe shaped bone called the hyoid. Lieberman explained, the
Speaker 1: larynx produces acoustic energy that causes the vocal chords of
Speaker 1: the larynx to open and clothes and the super laryngeal
Speaker 1: vocal tract. The space between the lips and the larynx
Speaker 1: changes shape with movement in the lips, tongue, and jaw
Speaker 1: to make a kind of malleable organ pipe that helps
Speaker 1: us make vowel and constant sounds. We share all this
Speaker 1: vocal equipment with Neanderthal's, so it stands to reason that
Speaker 1: their laugh would be similar to our own. The only
Speaker 1: difference of opinion among researchers here centers around whether the
Speaker 1: Neanderthal speaking voice was lower or higher than that of
Speaker 1: a modern human. So with that settled, the next big
Speaker 1: question is whether Neanderthals had the ability to find things
Speaker 1: funny enough to laugh at them. According to Lieberman and
Speaker 1: some recent research, it's very likely, he said. Epo Genetic
Speaker 1: evidence now shows that Neanderthal brains could execute complex motor acts.
Speaker 1: This means that Neanderthals could talk and had language. As
Speaker 1: long as their brains could control the complex gestures that
Speaker 1: human speech entails, they definitely could have laughed. Today's episode
Speaker 1: was written by Jesselyn Shields and produced by Tyler Klang.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other topics that
Speaker 1: will tiple you, visit our home planet, how Stuff Works
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