It's ironic -- Virchow led the puzzling anti-Neandertal propaganda in the 19th century, and it stuck. In the late 20th c there was that poisonously mouthy jackanapes from Stanford who rejected the anthropological approach (which includes morphology, which was used to create the anti-N myths in the first place) and pushed for DNA studies to "prove" that our Neandertal ancestors were "the village idiot".
By the time the technology made it practical to do the DNA studies, that guy had died (of cancer, I think) and his blatantly racist hand-me-down paradigm was overthrown. One still sees the bias in pointless speculations (in popular journalism and in alleged scholarship) about why or how the N went extinct. They didn't. We're their progeny. This doesn't mean they are our *only* ancestors, it means that they are no more extinct (or no less our ancestors) than the "gracile" remains preferred by the Teadrinkers.
Here's an old fave:
The Neandertal Enigma"Frayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]
by James Shreeve
in local libraries