Neanderthals May Have Had High PItched and Nasal Voices

[Sgt_Gath]

What Did Neanderthals Sound Like IFLScience

It's a bit underwhelming to say the least.

The demonstration they give may or may not be accurate, but the basic gist of it seems to be that a male Neanderthal would probably sound something like a cross between Mickey Mouse and a less metallic Dalek from Dr. Who.

 

[Delta4Embassy]

Is it why homo sapiens wiped them out? Neanderthal says something, Sapiens starts and viciously attacks before he realizes the non-threat. If Mickey Mouse/Dalek came up behind me and said hello prolly scare me a little bit too.

 

[Statistikhengst]

What Did Neanderthals Sound Like IFLScience

It's a bit underwhelming to say the least.

The demonstration they give may or may not be accurate, but the basic gist of it seems to be that a male Neanderthal would probably sound something like a cross between Mickey Mouse and a less metallic Dalek from Dr. Who.

Sgt_Gath


It's interesting, and thank you for posting this, but what decides tessitura (range) is the actual length of the vocal folds with neither the crycothyroids or the crycoarytenoids unduly tensing, or to put it another way, with both sets of opposing muscles in balance. The longer the folds, the deeper the general tessitura. The shorter the folds, the higher the tessitura.

As to the subject of nasal or not nasal, that is absolutely impossible to ascertain with 100% certainty, since a large nasal cavity does not necessarily mean a nasal sound at all. When a person breathes to speak and of course, to sing, the soft palate is lifted in the back of the mouth. For perfect singing, if the soft palate is perfectly raised, then it will completely hermetically seal-off the port to the nasal cavity, and therefore no nasality would ensue at all. For speaking, some people tend to be somewhat nasal, others not at all. Nature or nurture? Who knows for sure....

With that background information, without having an actual neanderthal soft-palate to look at and examine, this issue can never be really correctly assessed.

More likely is that overall, neanderthals had a SLIGHTLY higher speaking tessitura than Homo Sapiens of today, and whether or not a neanderthal back then spoke nasally would be an individual issue.

I am also amazed that that woman in the video would pick out a student who would speak so terribly "off the breath" in order to make her point. Kind of silly.



It should be noted that just 170 years ago, the voice of authority, at least in the Western World, was the high voice, and the voice of the "Dummkopf" was the low voice.

With the advent of radio, TV and film and therefore not necessarily the need to create one's own metallic acoustic when speaking or singing, that paradigm has pretty much flipped over.

Derideo_Te Mertex - I thought this might interest both of you.

 

[Statistikhengst]

And yes, the video was underwhelming.

 

[Missourian]

Pretty sure this voice belonged to Nebraska Man, Hesperopithecus haroldcookii.

 

[Moonglow]

The Irish tenor is the most valuable of them all...

 

[Derideo_Te]

What Did Neanderthals Sound Like IFLScience

It's a bit underwhelming to say the least.

The demonstration they give may or may not be accurate, but the basic gist of it seems to be that a male Neanderthal would probably sound something like a cross between Mickey Mouse and a less metallic Dalek from Dr. Who.

Sgt_Gath


It's interesting, and thank you for posting this, but what decides tessitura (range) is the actual length of the vocal folds with neither the crycothyroids or the crycoarytenoids unduly tensing, or to put it another way, with both sets of opposing muscles balance. The longer the folds, the deeper the general tessitura. The shorter the folds, the higher the tessitura.

As to the subject of nasal or not nasal, that is absolutely impossible to ascertain with 100% certainty, since a large nasal cavity does not necessarily mean a nasal sound at all. When a person breathes to speak and of course, to sing, the soft palate is lifted in the back of the mouth. For perfect singing, if the soft palate is perfectly raised, then it will completely hermetically seal-off the port to the nasal cavity, and therefore no nasality would ensue at all. For speaking, some people tend to be somewhat nasal, others not at all. Nature or nurture? Who knows for sure....

With that background information, without having an actual neanderthal soft-palate to look at and examine, this issue can never be really correctly assessed.

More likely is that overall, neanderthals had a SLIGHTLY higher speaking tessitura than Homo Sapiens of today, and whether or not a neanderthal back then spoke nasally would be an individual issue.

I am also amazed that that woman in the video would pick out a student who would speak so terribly "off the breath" in order to make her point. Kind of silly.



It should be noted that just 170 years ago, the voice of authority, at least in the Western World, was the high voice, and the voice of the "Dummkopf" was the low voice.

With the advent of radio, TV and film and therefore not necessarily the need to create one's own metallic acoustic when speaking or singing, that paradigm has pretty much flipped over.

Derideo_Te Mertex - I thought this might interest both of you.

I have to agree that without soft tissue it is virtually impossible to know what anyone sounded like, including Neanderthals.

Now that we have had sound recording for a while it is fascinating to discover what some people actually sounded like.



For instance who would have guessed that General Patton had a squeaky voice? 1:50 mark.

 

[Moonglow]

In some class I don't remember, but the instructor stated that deeper voices are attributed to loud shouting.....before the phones came around...and telegraph...

 

[rightwinger]

Actually, they sounded like Fred Flintstone

Wilmaaaa!

 

[Statistikhengst]

What Did Neanderthals Sound Like IFLScience

It's a bit underwhelming to say the least.

The demonstration they give may or may not be accurate, but the basic gist of it seems to be that a male Neanderthal would probably sound something like a cross between Mickey Mouse and a less metallic Dalek from Dr. Who.

Sgt_Gath


It's interesting, and thank you for posting this, but what decides tessitura (range) is the actual length of the vocal folds with neither the crycothyroids or the crycoarytenoids unduly tensing, or to put it another way, with both sets of opposing muscles balance. The longer the folds, the deeper the general tessitura. The shorter the folds, the higher the tessitura.

As to the subject of nasal or not nasal, that is absolutely impossible to ascertain with 100% certainty, since a large nasal cavity does not necessarily mean a nasal sound at all. When a person breathes to speak and of course, to sing, the soft palate is lifted in the back of the mouth. For perfect singing, if the soft palate is perfectly raised, then it will completely hermetically seal-off the port to the nasal cavity, and therefore no nasality would ensue at all. For speaking, some people tend to be somewhat nasal, others not at all. Nature or nurture? Who knows for sure....

With that background information, without having an actual neanderthal soft-palate to look at and examine, this issue can never be really correctly assessed.

More likely is that overall, neanderthals had a SLIGHTLY higher speaking tessitura than Homo Sapiens of today, and whether or not a neanderthal back then spoke nasally would be an individual issue.

I am also amazed that that woman in the video would pick out a student who would speak so terribly "off the breath" in order to make her point. Kind of silly.



It should be noted that just 170 years ago, the voice of authority, at least in the Western World, was the high voice, and the voice of the "Dummkopf" was the low voice.

With the advent of radio, TV and film and therefore not necessarily the need to create one's own metallic acoustic when speaking or singing, that paradigm has pretty much flipped over.

Derideo_Te Mertex - I thought this might interest both of you.

I have to agree that without soft tissue it is virtually impossible to know what anyone sounded like, including Neanderthals.

Now that we have had sound recording for a while it is fascinating to discover what some people actually sounded like.



For instance who would have guessed that General Patton had a squeaky voice? 1:50 mark.

Unfortunately, sound recording can also lie. Here the version of the famous reporting of the crash of the Hindenburg in the 1930s:




But this here is how his voice really sounded:



(explained in the video)


So, now we've gone from neanderthals to hindenburgs.

Pretty damned clever, if I say so myself....

 

[Statistikhengst]

The Irish tenor is the most valuable of them all...

 

[NLT]

What Did Neanderthals Sound Like IFLScience

It's a bit underwhelming to say the least.

The demonstration they give may or may not be accurate, but the basic gist of it seems to be that a male Neanderthal would probably sound something like a cross between Mickey Mouse and a less metallic Dalek from Dr. Who.

So they sounded like hildabeast ?

 

[Moonglow]

The Irish tenor is the most valuable of them all...

Made me cry......My Grandfather's name was Ireland...now it's time to get pissed...

 

[Sgt_Gath]

Proof of Human/Neanderthal interbreeding?