CHICAGO — Neanderthals were hard-wired for language, according to a study released on Thursday that shows that the human’s closest extinct ancestors carried the only human gene that has so far been linked to language. The intriguing finding raises the possibility that Neanderthals had the genetic prerequisites for acquiring language, according to the authors of the report in the journal Current Biology. The squat, slope-browed Neanderthals lived in parts of what are today Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East for around 170 000 years, then died out mysteriously 28 000 years ago. ‘From the point of view of this gene, there is no reason to think that Neanderthals would not have had the ability for language,’ said Johannes Krause, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Anthropologists have previously argued that Neanderthals had some of the anatomical features necessary for speech such as a full complement of nerves leading to the tongue muscles, indicating that they were capable of forming speech sounds. But other researchers remain unconvinced, and Krause cautioned that more genes related to human linguistic abilities will likely emerge and require cross-checking with Neanderthal DNA. […]