External Cranial Base
Early work attempting to reconstruct linguistic abilities in fossils is
represented by the now classic studies of Lieberman and Crelin (1971)
and Lieberman,Crelin,and Klatt (1972).The authors focused on soft
tissue modeling of the vocal tract for reconstructing vocal-linguistic
ability.Their example was a reconstructed cast of the French Nean-
derthal from La Chapelle-aux-Saints.The original lacked most of its
teeth,which were lost long before the individual died,and the restored
specimen has a damaged,incomplete skull base.From the reconstructed
cast the researchers rebuilt laryngeal structures,throat muscles,and air
spaces of the vocal tract;sectioned their model;measured the recon-
structed regions;and by computer simulation estimated the sound-
production capability of the modeled regions.Based on this work,they
held that Neanderthals had reduced linguistic capacity compared with
more recent Homo sapiens,especially in their inability to produce spe-
cific vowels (/a/,/i/,/u/) and consonants (/k/ and /g/).More recent sum-
maries by Crelin (1987) and Lieberman (1991) reviewed soft tissue
reconstructions of other hominids using this same technique and
continued to deny full linguistic ability to numerous fossils,especially
Neanderthals.
The original reconstruction of the La Chapelle-aux-Saints Nean-
derthal and subsequent reconstitutions of soft tissue vocal tracts have
not been without criticism.For the La Chapelle case these ranged from
noting that the reconstructions did not take into account distortions
and incompleteness in the original fossil (Carlisle and Segal 1974,1978;
Houghton 1993) to pointing out anatomical inaccuracies in the place-
ment of certain structures and the resulting incapability of basic func-
tions such as swallowing (Falk 1975;Du Brul 1977),to the impossibility
of making certain parts of the reconstruction from casts (Burr 1976).In
the last case,it is reasonable to wonder how nasal chambers could be
modeled from a cast that does not mold the region.Some of these crit-
icisms were verified when Heim (1989) completed a new reconstruction
of the La Chapelle skull.He noted that the original reconstruction (done
in the early 1900s) made the external cranial base too flat (apelike),and
that when the actual anatomical configuration was done,details of
cranial base angulation did not differ from those in living humans.Heim
maintained there was no basis for stating that Neanderthals lacked a
modern vocal apparatus,but his work has been ignored by those who
base their conclusions on the old reconstruction or on the inaccurate cast
made from it.221 Fossil Evidence for the Origin of Speech Sounds