Could Neanderthals Laugh?

Neanderthals were more like us than we previously thought, but could they laugh? Learn why researchers think they could in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff works. Hey, brain Stuff,
Lauren Vogelbaum Here for millennia, Humans and Neanderthals or Neanderthals
if you prefer coexisted in Europe and Eurasia. You've probably
heard about it because apparently they all had sex, and
now you might have around two percent Neanderthal DNA in
your genome. It's a whole thing. So we know there

(00:24):
might have been some Neanderthal slash modern human romance. But
did they have any laughs together? Well, that mostly depends
on whether Neanderthals could laugh. It's a tricky question, though,
because what would Neanderthals have laughed at. We modern humans
laugh at all sorts of things. Depending on who you are.
It's equally possible to defall at kitten's playing as it

(00:44):
is to giggle over a pound about chemical engineering, if
that's what you're into. We know even less about Neanderthal
theory of mind than we do about our own, but
there's evidence that the idea that they were intellectually inferior
to modern humans is bogus. And though we don't rightly
know what would have tickled them, A research on the
evolution of laughter supports the idea that Neanderthals were most

(01:06):
likely air to a glorious legacy of chuckles. That's because
other great apes laugh. In fact, laughter in our phylogenetic
corner of the world is estimated to have evolved between
ten and sixteen million years ago. It most likely evolved
from the labored breathing that happens when you're playing or
being tickled. Spontaneous laughter is something we all do within

(01:27):
the first couple months of life, even in babies born
deaf or blind. The main goal of laughter seems to
be to create and maintain social bonds. We know Neanderthals
lived in small family groups, so although they might not
have needed to have the social smarts to yuck it
up at a comedy club, given their lifestyle, laughter probably
would have been beneficial to them, just as it is

(01:47):
to us or ape chimpanzee. But a lot goes into laughter,
and the question of whether or not Neanderthals could laugh
has two parts, the first having to do with the
ability of the Neanderthal voice to produce the sound, and
second with whether or not they have the cognitive ability
to find things funny. According to Dr Philip Lieberman, Professor
Emeritus in the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences

(02:10):
at Brown College. Neanderthals definitely had all the vocal equipment
required to laugh. Neanderthals had a vocal setup very similar
to humans, a larynx or voice box, supported by a
delicate horseshoe shaped bone called the hyoid. Lieberman explained, the
larynx produces acoustic energy that causes the vocal chords of

(02:31):
the larynx to open and clothes and the super laryngeal
vocal tract. The space between the lips and the larynx
changes shape with movement in the lips, tongue, and jaw
to make a kind of malleable organ pipe that helps
us make vowel and constant sounds. We share all this
vocal equipment with Neanderthal's, so it stands to reason that
their laugh would be similar to our own. The only

(02:51):
difference of opinion among researchers here centers around whether the
Neanderthal speaking voice was lower or higher than that of
a modern human. So with that settled, the next big
question is whether Neanderthals had the ability to find things
funny enough to laugh at them. According to Lieberman and
some recent research, it's very likely, he said. Epo Genetic

(03:12):
evidence now shows that Neanderthal brains could execute complex motor acts.
This means that Neanderthals could talk and had language. As
long as their brains could control the complex gestures that
human speech entails, they definitely could have laughed. Today's episode
was written by Jesselyn Shields and produced by Tyler Klang.

(03:35):
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