You may have missed my original post on this. Only mankind, among all the
animals on the earth, have Broca's area. This area leaves an impression on
the inside of our skulls. Similar impressions in similar location are found
in Neanderthal's, Homo erectus and Homo habilis. No other fossils of man or
beast have this impression. Thus, I would conclude that it is reasonable to
conclude that this is broca's area.
As to whether or not speech occurred, is, of course, impossible to
prove. There are no tape recordings from that distant past. And some have
suggested that speech was a late invention but there is no proof one way or
another. The most serious challenge to speech in fossil man involved
Neanderthals.
"Although some of the earlier sterotyped notions about Neanderthals now
seem to be passe, a controversial idea has been introduced that may revive
them, it has been claimed that Neanderthals could not speak very well.
Philip Lieberman, Edmund S. Crelin, and Dennis H. Klatt (1972) have made
measurements
of the neck vertebrae and the base of the skull of the man of La Chapelle aux
Saints and have concluded that Neanderthals were unable to pronounce a number
of vowels and consonants that we can pronounce today. This does not mean
that Neanderthals had no language, but Lieberman et al. believe that
linguistic communication among Neanderthals was considerably slower and less
efficeint
than among ourselves.
"Criticism of the findings of Lieberman and his associates has come from
two articles in the American Journal of Physical nthropology, in which the
following points re made: (1) the brains of Neanderthals were at least as
large as those of modern humans; (2) the Sylvian fissures of the brain, as
seen in the endocranial cast of the skull of La Chapelle aux Saints, resemble
those of modern humans, implying that speech was present, (3) modern adults
who have features like those described by Lieberman et al., such as
prognathism and flattening of the base of the skull, are quite able to speak
complex modern languages; and (4) Lieberman and his associates have
reconstructed the hyoid bone of the La Chapelle aux Saints individual in a
position too high to permit swallowing, not taking into account the influence
of upright posture and bipedalism on the position of the larnyx."~Victor
Barnouw, An Introduction to
Anthropology: Physical Antrhopology and Archaeology, Vol. 1, (Homewood,
Illinois: The Dorsey Press, 1982) p. 151
glenn