Knowing when to shut up. Humans, talking for thousands of years, still do not have that basic instinct

A recent study of 3D models of ear structures of Neanderthal skulls and their comparison to those of Homo sapiens as well as the much older Sima hominin indicates Neanderthals could also hear and produce the speech of modern humans. Even if the Neanderthals — who preceded us on Earth by about 200,000 years — merely had the sort of monosyllabic speech that preoccupied teenagers resort to with their parents today, it is amazing that another recently published research paper concludes that in our 40,000 years of existence, most humans have not yet figured out a basic prerequisite of speech: how and when to end conversations. Most people seem unhappy with the duration of their dialogues, with equal percentages of that study group reporting their conversations ended too soon or continued for too long.

Neanderthals, of course, did not have to follow social niceties when terminating interlocutions, but as modern humans are supposedly endowed with sharper brains, this should not have become such an insurmountable problem resulting in innumerable unsatisfactory exchanges. Yet, only 2% of our parleys end when we want them to. It seems we clever humans have evolved a framework of social interaction — including conversations — that is far too sophisticated for most of us to master and practise.