Of Course They Could Talk!

Hola darlings!  Happy New Year to you all.  While the weather here is absolutely dreadful, way below normal cold and tonight windchills dropping as low as minus 30 F, we only got about 8 inches of new snow on top of the more than a foot that fell during December.  UGH!  To the south of us in the suburbs of Chicago, some places got 16 inches!  Now the snow is headed out east and it's going to be one big bad mess for you folks out there.  I hope everyone will come through safely. 

Okay, enough moaning and groaning about the weather.  Can't do a damn thing about it except move, and that won't happen now with my health issues, as I want to be close to family just in case.  Thank Goddess for polar fleece, hot chocolate, down-filled throws and blankets, and my fireplace! 

Check out this article from BBC News Online.  I didn't see the reference in the BBC article, but a synopsis at Archaeology Magazine Online reported that the Neanderthal remains that yielded the hyoid bone are 60,000 years old. 
20 December 2013 Last updated at 11:06 ET

Neanderthals could speak like modern humans, study suggests

By Melissa Hogenboom Science reporter, BBC News

An analysis of a Neanderthal's fossilised hyoid bone - a horseshoe-shaped structure in the neck - suggests the species had the ability to speak.

This has been suspected since the 1989 discovery of a Neanderthal hyoid that looks just like a modern human's.

But now computer modelling of how it works has shown this bone was also used in a very similar way.

Writing in journal Plos One, scientists say its study is "highly suggestive" of complex speech in Neanderthals.