Chatty cavemen? Me Neanderthal, talk good Findings suggest human relative may have had language skills By Charles Q. Choi LiveScience Updated: 12:22 p.m. ET Oct 18, 2007 Neanderthals might have spoken just like humans do now, new genetic findings suggest. Neanderthals are humanity's closest extinct relatives . Since their discovery more than 150 years ago, researchers have found out they could make tools just like our ancestors could, but whether Neanderthals also had advanced language, rather than mere grunts and groans, has remained hotly debated. To learn more, scientists investigated DNA from Neanderthal bones collected from a cave in northern Spain, concentrating on a gene, FOXP2, which is to date the only one known to play a role in speech and language. People with an abnormal copy of this gene have speech and language problems. Genes similar to FOXP2 are found throughout the genomes of the animal kingdom, from fish to alligators to songbirds. The molecule that human FOXP2 generates differs from chimpanzee FOXP2's by just two amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Past research suggests the gene's modern human variant evolved fewer than 200,000 years ago. Now scientists find the Neanderthal FOXP2 gene is identical to ours. The ancestors of Neanderthals diverged from ours roughly 300,000 years ago, according to the latest thinking. Some studies have suggested that the two species might have intermingled after that, however. "It is possible that Neanderthals spoke just like we do," paleogeneticist Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, told LiveScience. "Of course many genes are involved in language," cautioned Krause, the new study's lead researcher. As scientists discover more of such genes, these will have to be examined in Neanderthals as well, he said. Krause noted that some might suggest that interbreeding or "gene flow" (aka sex) between modern humans and Neanderthals led to us having FOXP2 in common. "However, we see no evidence for gene flow in the Y chromosome sequences," he said. Instead, the modern human and Neanderthal Y chromosomes are substantially different genetically. Krause and his colleagues detailed their findings online Oct. 18 in the journal Current Biology. THE NEANDERTHAL AND THE CONNECTION AT GATLINBURG, TENNESSEE - On the West side of the Great Smokey Mountains in Gatlinburg, Tennessee we found what appears to be a small village of Neanderthals, but only a few of them had kept the last name. Bob (or Robert as we would suggest) and Ted Neanderthal are brothers and living among some of the more "elite" of the "cavemen" or clansman as they prefer to be called and with a social enviroment that mirrors that of our own. Bob enjoys trivia and has become quite the nuisance with some of the tribe who choose to "evade" his questions particularily on Presidents and the Smokey Mountains, but ever so often he and Ted get to go to a nearby Smokey's baseball game located at the base of the Smokey Mountains in Sevieville, Tennessee. Do they like the hotdogs? "You bet", quipped Ted, "They are the best, dog, soda, and popcorn, you just can't beat it". Ted, having been married for 30 years has 3 sons and 3 daughters, 2 of the sons are doctors and 1 a lawyer, while 2 of the daugthers are school teachers and married and the one daughter, Amanda is single and in college majoring in physics and atomic composition and would of course like to find a good single man with ambition. A great catch for any of you single men but she stands along with her siblings around 9 foot and is alway being "jabbed" as being the 50 foot woman, the movie made famous by the Abbot and Costello fame. They have worked well with the area visitors in Gatlinburg but do not venture out much from the area as they have a deep love for the mountains and fishing and hunting. Amanda, as well as being very beautiful and intelligent wishes to marry outside her "clan" to a "normal" everyday type of human (like you or I) as she states it, "We would like to produce offspring with our cousins that they might start to evolve more like that of ourselves, the "human clan" is or has been "dumbed down" for quite some time and we would like a chance to help them gain more not only in stature but in intellect. When you look at their children today they do not know how to dress, talk, or carry an intelligent conversation we would like to interact with them not only on a physical basis or relationship level but also in the lab as we think we have medications and laser techniques that might be able to better adapt them into a societal role - we have great hope for our distant cousin and his struggle to communicate among their peer groups, we have had great success here in Gatlinburg at the GETALL clinic which is a 501C based group and work closely with other government entities to ensure the safety and respect of all humanity." As one might observe the order of the day for the Neanderthals is tall, no pun intended, and demanding, but one I am sure they will meet. It might well be noted that the Neanderthal's as well as some of the other "clanspeople" actually can trace their beginings back to the Biblical era and the Gensis account in Chapter 4:1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD. 16 And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden. 17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch. It seems our distant "cousins" and ourselves have a "common bond" after all.