That’s a fairytale. The Neanderthal was the absolute apex predator of ice-age Europe and his DNA was halfway between ours and that of a chimpanzee. His ribcage was conical as are those of the great apes, his footprints are apelike, his face was prognathic as are those of the apes and his skull is a very good fit for an ape’s profile and a bad fit for one of ours. Cro Magnon needles are common while nobody has ever found a Neanderthal needle; that’s because a creature with a 6” ice-age fur coat doesn’t NEED needles.
Incorrect. Chimpanzees share 94% of our DNA, whereas Neanderthals shared 99.7% of our DNA. Rather than being halfway "between" chimps and humans, they were actually 95% of the way to the human side...which explains why we were able to intrebreed with them.
To put it into perspective, Neanderthals and humans differed by only 0.3%, just twice the difference of 0.15% between some Africans and Europeans.