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Researchers from the University of Iowa published a study in Science Advances showing that Neanderthals possessed HAQERs, regions of DNA that influence speech 200 times more than the rest of the genome, language sequences that emerged before the separation between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals 550,000 to 765,000 years ago.
Neanderthals may have been able to speak, and the latest evidence for this hypothesis comes not from ear bones or cranial casts, but from specific stretches of DNA that exert a disproportionate influence on human linguistic ability. A study published in the journal Science Advances identified genomic regions named HAQERs (human-ancestor-quick-evolving regions) which, although representing less than 0.1% of the genome, impact speech abilities 200 times more than any other genetic sequence analyzed. The crucial finding is that Neanderthals also possessed these regions, possibly even more prominently than modern humans, which means our extinct relatives had the necessary biological infrastructure to develop some form of complex communication.
Study co-author Jacob Michaelson, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at the University of Iowa, states that this discovery makes it increasingly difficult to sustain the long-held doubt about whether Neanderthals actually spoke. Michaelson explains that there is no single “language gene”: what determines individual differences in speech ability is the collective effect of variations distributed across multiple points in the genome, and HAQERs are precisely the stretches where these variations produce the most significant impact. Genetic analysis of 350 children who took language tests during their early school years confirmed that HAQERs influenced linguistic performance with an intensity unparalleled in any other region of the DNA, a pattern that held when the study was expanded to more than 100,000 individuals around the world.
What HAQERs are and why they link Neanderthals to language
HAQERs are not genes themselves, but regulatory elements that control when and how certain genes are activated in the body.
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This distinction is fundamental because it means that HAQERs do not produce proteins directly, but function as switches that decide at what point in brain development certain genes are activated, influencing the formation of the neural structures that support speech.
The discovery that less than 0.1% of DNA has a 200-fold greater impact on language than the rest of the genome reshapes the scientific understanding of how the ability to speak evolved in the human lineage.
The data indicate that HAQERs emerged after the separation between human ancestors and chimpanzees, which occurred between six and eight million years ago, but before the split between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, estimated to be between 765,000 and 550,000 years ago.
This timeline is what connects Neanderthals to language: if the genomic regions responsible for speech already existed in the common ancestor that gave rise to both modern humans and Neanderthals, both species inherited the biological machinery capable of supporting complex communication.
The presence of HAQERs in the Neanderthal genome does not prove that they spoke, but it eliminates the argument that they lacked the genetic resources to do so.
How scientists discovered the connection between DNA and speech in Neanderthals
The study’s methodology combined genetics with practical language tests. The researchers analyzed the genetic material of 350 children who underwent assessments of linguistic skills during their early school years, comparing their test performance with the presence and variation of HAQERs in each participant’s DNA.
The result showed a correlation that was 200 times greater than the influence of any other genomic region on the same abilities, a proportion that was confirmed when the analysis was expanded to a global sample of more than 100,000 people.
Replication on a global scale is what gives the discovery its robustness. When a genetic pattern appears in a sample of 350 children, it could be a statistical coincidence; when it holds true for more than 100,000 individuals from different populations, ethnicities, and languages, the relationship between HAQERs and language gains the status of solid evidence.
For Neanderthals, this means that the same genomic regions that determine variations in the linguistic ability of modern humans were already present in our relatives hundreds of thousands of years ago, a period when Neanderthals occupied Europe and Asia with social organization, material culture, and behaviors that suggest advanced cognition.
Why did HAQERs stop evolving and what does this reveal about Neanderthals
An intriguing finding of the study is that HAQERs have remained relatively stable over the last 20,000 years, interrupting the trend of advantageous traits continuing to evolve through natural pressure.
The explanation proposed by the researchers involves a physical limit: HAQERs influence the growth of the brain and, consequently, the skull, but the size of babies’ heads cannot increase indefinitely because larger skulls would make childbirth increasingly risky for the mother.
Early humans would have quickly reached a maximum point in brain development compatible with safe childbirth, and from then on, HAQERs stabilized because any additional increase in brain size would generate a reproductive cost greater than the linguistic benefit.
This limitation applied equally to Neanderthals. With brains that were on average even larger than those of Homo sapiens, Neanderthals may have faced the same evolutionary limit, and the stability of HAQERs in the shared genome suggests that both species reached a similar linguistic capacity before following distinct evolutionary paths.
If Neanderthals had HAQERs, had the brain, and had a social organization that demanded coordinated communication, the question “did they speak?” begins to seem less like a doubt and more like a confirmation just waiting for the right adjective to describe what kind of language they used.
What the discovery about Neanderthals changes in the understanding of human language
The study reframes the timeline of language as a biological capacity. If the genetic basis for speech arose before the split between humans and Neanderthals, more than 550,000 years ago, language ceases to be an exclusive attribute of Homo sapiens and becomes a shared heritage with at least one sister species that developed culture, buried its dead, and produced rock art in European caves.
The implication is that the capacity for complex communication did not emerge in the last 200,000 years along with Homo sapiens, but dates back to a much earlier period of hominid evolution.
For science, the discovery opens doors and imposes caution in equal measure. Not all experts agree that HAQERs originally emerged to favor language: some argue that these sequences may be linked to brain growth more broadly, and that the connection to speech would be a secondary consequence of larger, more complex brains.
Regardless of this nuance, the fact that Neanderthals carried the same stretches of DNA that today determine linguistic abilities in humans is evidence that paleontology cannot ignore, and that brings two species that traditional science treated for decades as categorically different even closer.
And you, do you believe that Neanderthals spoke a language? Do you think this discovery changes the way we see our ancestors? Leave your opinion in the comments.
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