Neanderthal man speaks after 30,000 years

If you ever wondered if the human race has made progress in 30,000 years or not, try listening to the sound of Neanderthal man that has just been reconstructed:

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/04/16/neanderthal.sound/index.html

Its interesting what a factor “speech” and “language” plays in social progress.  It fascinates me that the scriptures of the Bahai Faith mention three specific “signs” for the maturity of the human race, and one of these is that all the people in the world will be able to communicate with each other using the same language (that is everyone would still learn their “mother tongue”, but we would also learn a language that was common to everyone on the planet — either one of the existing languages to be agreed upon, or a new one).  I saw an entire country change by applying this principle — I grew up in Singapore which, a few decades ago, had different races of people speaking 4 different languages.  The government then introduced into all the school systems a policy of teaching children English as a common language for everyone in the country, as well as mandatory education in another of the 3 languages spoken (usually the “mother tongue” of the child).  Anyway, no need to comment on the progress Singapore has made in the past few decades   I’m sure being able to understand each other was one among many factors but surely an important one.

Now we can only hope that whatever common language the whole human race  may eventually adopt is not as frog sounding as the Neanderthals