The Spirit in Human Evolution - Waldorf Research Institute

Neanderthal Language
Their spoken language, as far as we can tell from fossil remains and an analysis
of their behavior patterns, was probably not that dissimilar to our own. The hyoid
bone (to which the tongue is attached and forms the Adam’s apple), found recently
with the Kebara Neanderthal fossil, indicates a virtually modern vocalization ability.
Yet the behavioral indications suggest that a fully modern syntax had not yet evolved,
thus keeping language structurally simple at the level of proto-language (see section
on language in Chapter 6). We can only guess whether they danced, chanted, beat out
rhythms on wood or bone. The evidence for their decorative or artistic work is very
sparse.
Although the comparison with social animals is largely inappropriate, it is
useful to put things into perspective. When one considers how complex chimp social
life is, then we must imagine vastly more subtle experiences at the feeling and intuitive
levels for the Ancients. They were, after all, human! As such they were endowed with
a spiritual life. It was clearly one that required little outer expression and least of all
material form. No doubt they expressed their spirituality through their connection
with the environment; they lived it rather than reflected on it. It was only rarely selfconscious.
There was presumably little need to give it concrete form, as later humanity
did in works of art and ritual. Group identity was more intuitive and required less or no
symbolic representation. Memory was collective, impersonal and natural, in the sense
of being part of the natural world, which is not the same as instinct.
My intuitive feeling is that when they spoke it was to pass on vital information,
warnings, sightings of prey, or to express their sense of well-being or discomfort. I
imagine their souls found profounder expression through extended vowel sounds,
perhaps in song which more resembled the resonances of the wind and the imitation of
animal sounds. Their vocal apparatus was well suited to articulating such sounds, and
their barrel chests would have provided the lung control for long, drawn-out intonations.
Their large nasal and sinus cavities would have contributed to the resonance.
Fanciful or not, I feel that reflections in this direction are appropriate in trying
to understand the nature of the humanity of the Ancients and their so very different
level of spirituality. The difficulty is, we have so utterly lost the experience of being at
one with the natural, not to mention the spiritual, world that we have to rack our brains
trying to interpret what a human is like without most of the accoutrements of ethnic
identity, complex language, technology, religion and acute self-awareness. These last
few pages have been a limited attempt to grant some human dignity to a people who
successfully managed to live over such a long period of often incredibly hard conditions,
and who, on the whole, have not had the respect from our more self-important age that
they deserve .
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