I’ve been proposing for years - even here - that bigger-brained Neanderthal was so much smarter than Cro-Magnon man that the average Neanderthal group was as smart as the average college faculty. So while Cro-Magnon was getting on with tinkering, making improved tools and inventing (eventually) the steam engine, Neanderthal was considering transfinite numbers, forming small music appreciation socities and generally saying “Om,” to their eventual disadvantage.
Well, it’s a theory. ;^)
They actually came up with a proof for the proposition:
I think therefore I am not.
and subsequently vanished.
My theory is that Neanderthal women were such butt-ugly redheads that not even their own males would breed with them. You never see one in the Geico commercials do you?
And maybe like modern college professors, they didn’t have time for kids any more.