What always puzzles me when I see these Neanderthal reconstructions is how they interpret eyes. Neanderthal eye sockets are significantly larger than ours, they are placed higher on the skull, and are round instead of rectangular. Would this not mean that their eyes are much larger and rounder than ours? I don’t know the answer, but this, like all of the reconstructions I have seen, have normally sized human eyes.
“Would this not mean that their eyes are much larger and rounder than ours?”
Perhaps, but what I recall from a medical exameriner’s presentation about identifying skeletal remains:
Round eye sockets are characteristic of Caucasians.
Rectangular eye sockets characteristic of Africans.
Oval eye sockets are characteristic of Asians.
In movies of the 1950s, Amerindian braves spoke of white-folk as “the round-eyes”.