This doesn't seem revolutionary to me at all. Neanderthal's wouldn't be capable of fully human speech because they wouldn't have had a human vocal tract capable of all the same sounds as us, but the notion of simpler Neanderthal speech, or a combination of speech and sign language is not alien at all to the linguistic academic community. I think the idea of Neanderthals as nothing but grunting, idiotic man-apes is just a popular image not endorsed by most anthropologists or linguists.
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"If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?"
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