[varmintman]

The Neanderthals were just another "race" like blacks, whites, etc. They were a bit shorter, stockier, more well muscled, and had essentially the same brain.

Venderamini's thesis would be really easy to falsify (i.e. it's not pseudoscience); all you'd have to do would be find the first Neanderthal needle.

I'm assuming that's never gonna happen however since a creature with an 8" fur coat doesn't really need clothing or needles...

[muawiyah]

You'd really have to be nuts to wander about with an 8" thick fur coat playing with fire. We do have Neanderthal fireplaces AND there are needles.

Since the Neanderthal type lived in Europe over a 300,000+ period of time (as compared to our own 35,000 year occupancy) their stuff is a lot older than ours, subject to the wear and tear of FOUR ICE AGES (with innumerable glacial advances) .

Full DNA analysis has been done for only a handful of Neanderthals as yet, but they got the same stuff ~ they are people ~ not apes at all.

BTW, they could also make pigments (for painting something) and could tan hides.

As is typical of so many uninformed folks in this world, what you end up doing is attacking yet another group of red-heads!

Sure, it's a different red-yellow pigment than the more advanced humans have, but it's still red.

Portrayals of Neanderthal as BLACK or DEEP BROWN are necessarily wrong. Portrayals of other humans as WHITE at the same period of time are also wrong.