Neanderthal Man

The discovery of a 60,000-year-old, two-inch neck bone in a cave in Israel, reported in today's issue of the British journal Nature, suggests that modern man's brutish predecessor, the Neanderthal, may have had the physical capacity to speak. The conclusion--drawn by a group of Israeli, French and American archeologists--has provoked sharp reactions from other scientists and has rekindled a long-simmering controversy over the origin and evolution of human language. But Baruch Arensburg and his colleagues in Israel contend that the tiny U-shaped fossil, which was discovered in the Kebara Cave at Mt. Carmel, closely resembles its counterpart, known as the hyoid bone, in modern humans.

There was a cartoon in an old issue of The New Yorker that showed a group of pugilistic types sitting around a table at a title fight, and one of the managers was leaning toward the promoter and saying: "My boy says he don't sign till he finds out precisely why they call him the Bushwick Assassin." If I were Iron Mike Tyson today, that vagrant thought might just cross my mind, too.

The skull and almost complete skeleton of a Neanderthal man between 40,000 and 50,000 years old have been found in central Morocco near Fez, the Moroccan news agency MAP reported Tuesday. The skeleton was found lying on its back in a pit three yards below the surface by a team of geologists working for Fez College, the agency said Monday. It is the second discovery of its kind in Morocco since 1962, when two Neanderthal skulls were found in a mine near Safi, south of Casablanca.