Neanderthals

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  • Computer synthesiser enables Neanderthals to be heard

    by 
    Darren Murph
    Darren Murph
    04.16.2008

    We know, it's a dream of yours to one day hear what Neanderthals from eons past sounded like when they conversed of DAPs possessing a few kilobytes of storage space and longed for computers that wouldn't take up entire caves. Okay, so maybe that's a stretch, but an anthropologist at Florida Atlantic University has seemingly figured out a way to actually recreate what ancient human speech (probably) sounded like. By utilizing reconstructions of a trio of Neanderthal vocal tracts, the crew was able to engineer what a spoken "E" would've sounded like via a computer synthesiser; in time, they're hoping to construct an entire Neanderthal sentence. Of course, not everyone's convinced that the discoveries made thus far are entirely accurate, but be sure to hit the read link a take a listen for yourself (hint: it's nothing like those Bud Light commercials).[Via Slashdot, image courtesy of ABC]