Neanderthal ear scans support idea they could hear us and had a 'type of human language' Lindsay Clark Tue 2 Mar 2021 // 13:15 UTC Share Copy Computerised tomography scans and auditory bioengineering models of fossilised Neanderthals ears suggest our closest extinct cousins had a hearing range necessary to process human speech. The virtual reconstructions based on previously published fossil specimens by researchers at the Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid, Spain and Binghampton University in New York, US, have shown that the occupied bandwidth of Neanderthal hearing was in the same range as that of modern-day humans, and also greater than that of earlier hominin samples recovered in Sima de los Huesos, the "pit of bones" in the Atapuerca Mountains, northern Spain.