Abstract

There are over 6000 languages in the world, different dialects within communities, pigins and creole languages, clicks and whistles, guttural and sweet, but how did this all begin? Who, what, how did we learn to speak so many languages? There are many theories. One of those theories suggests that the origin of language is monogenesis, some argue that perhaps the first language began with one of the most unlikely ancestors: Neanderthals. Is this possible? The focus of this paper is whether or not Neanderthals may have had the same capabilities for speech as modern humans.