Comment by NotSuspicious

How does it make sense to say that speech developed 60 kya when Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosomal Adam are commonly dated 200+ kya? Not to mention the recent advances within the past few years that more or less prove Neanderthals and Denisovans spoke as well. With that information Homo heidelbergensis almost certainly spoke as well and if I could bet on it, I would advocate that the smart money would be on Homo Erectus having some level of speech too. In fact a recent paper argues that case: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13752-025-00521-8 It's unfortunately not on SciHub though so I can't attest to it.