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The thinking Neanderthals: What do we know about Neanderthal cognition?
Author(s) -
Johansson Sverker
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
wiley interdisciplinary reviews: cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.526
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1939-5086
pISSN - 1939-5078
DOI - 10.1002/wcs.1317
Subject(s) - neanderthal , cognition , invisibility , cognitive science , psychology , ancient dna , cognitive linguistics , cognitive psychology , history , sociology , archaeology , computer science , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , population , demography
The study of Neanderthal cognition is difficult, because of the archaeological invisibility of cognition, and because of the methodological issues that arise both from that invisibility and from their being close to modern humans. Nevertheless, fair progress has been made in gathering relevant evidence. There is now good evidence that Neanderthals were cognitively sophisticated, displaying many of the cognitive traits that were traditionally regarded as proxies for modern human cognition, notably including language. It can neither be proven nor excluded that they were our cognitive equals, but they were close enough to us, biologically and cognitively, to interbreed successfully and leave a genetic legacy in our DNA. WIREs Cogn Sci 2014, 5:613–620. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1317 This article is categorized under: Cognitive Biology > Evolutionary Roots of Cognition Linguistics > Evolution of Language