Attempts to identify language ability in the fossilized skeletal remains of H. erectus have focused on aspects of the nervous system, including the size of the vertebral canal (a proxy for the size of the spinal cord), and external features of endocasts (natural fossils of endocranial space and a proxy for brain size and shape).
Language is perhaps the hallmark human trait, but can be difficult to assess directly from the fossil record. Attempts to identify language ability in the fossilized skeletal remains of H. erectus have focused on aspects of the nervous system, including the size of the vertebral canal (a proxy for the size of the spinal cord), and external features of endocasts (natural fossils of endocranial space and a proxy for brain size and shape). Thus far, there have been no definitive anatomical findings to cause researchers to reject the idea that H. erectus was capable of some kind of human-like proto-language.