[TKEman]

I personally think that the biggest advantage our immediate ancestors had vis-a-vis the other "human" lines was the development of language.

[RadioAstronomer]

I personally think that the biggest advantage our immediate ancestors had vis-a-vis the other "human" lines was the development of language.

I quite agree!. And yes this is a pretty cool thread. :)

[PatrickHenry]

I personally think that the biggest advantage our immediate ancestors had vis-a-vis the other "human" lines was the development of language.

If true, it's an incredible advantage; but how do we really know the old neanterthals couldn't use language? I know people today who can talk, but whose intellectual lives are as impoverished as those of any neanderthal. It seems that some people can talk, yet they still can't manipulate abstract symbols very well. That could have been the big difference. Perhaps we'll never know.

[Flo]

I distinctly remember the first time I read of the importance of language in anthropological discovery.

It was at the following site: Dolni Vestonice and the implications in relationship to human evolution just blew me away.

A quote from that site by Tim White, paleoanthrophologist:

After two or three hundred thousand years of nothing new, suddenly, in a tiny segment of time, after this huge gulf of nothing, you've got everything. There's one style over here and another one over there; there's trade, there's art, there's differentiation, all of this stuff just blowing up in your face. So you say to yourself, how come? There's only one thing ...that is big-time enough to render such a huge behavioral shift...it's got to be language.