Not quite!
A recent study showed that unlike an early hominid, Sima, Neanderthals had a hearing system that is particularly sensitive in a certain bandwidth...
...the one used by speech. Specifically, it shows that Neanderthals had hearing designed to pick up on consonants (If you listen to chimpanzees vocalize, they only produce vowels).
The scientists caution that it doesn't move that they had the ability to understand speech, only the physical anatomy to hear and produce it.
But it seems to me as if those two things had to go hand in hand.
(Plus, why would we have interbred with people we couldn't communicate with to at least some degree?)
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