"The wisdom of the bones"

Joao Duarte (jota@ip.pt)
Thu, 05 Sep 1996 20:54:35 GMT


I've just finished reading the book "The Wisdom of the Bones"

In it, the authors mention the fact that the Homo Erectus squeleton
that they discovered, had a very narrow passage for the spinal cord.

If I understud the author's idea correctly, this implied that H.E.
didn't have the fine control we have over the muscles in the Thorax
and abdomen.

Since these muscles are very important in breathing control which in
turn is essencial to speech, the authors sugested that H. E. was
incapable of speech as we know it.

The authors went on to sugest that only anatomicaly modern humans can

However they never mention if Neandertal man had a narrow spinal cord.
Since there are many squeletons of Neandertal man, this should be easy
to answer. Did they ?



Note: I am NOT a native English speaker. I'm am sorry if the text is
not perfectly clear.