Can Chimpanzee Vocalizations Reveal the Origins of Human Language?
Acoustical Society of America (ASA)Fossil primates provide important clues about human evolution, but the sounds they made and the soft tissue involved in making those sounds weren’t preserved. So chimpanzees can provide important points of comparison for inferring the sorts of sounds our early ancestors may have made. During the 175th ASA Meeting, Michael Wilson, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota, will present his group’s work searching for similarities between the vocal communications of chimpanzees and humans.