They showed no improvement in tools and culture after 250,000 years according to science channel so I think they were just apes. DNA shows that they were related to no other creature on earth so where does this cousin stuff come from? They were not related to humans.
"RED hair may be the genetic legacy of Neanderthals, scientists believe."
"Researchers at the John Radcliffe Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford say that the so-called “ginger gene” which gives people red hair, fair skin and freckles could be up to 100,000 years old."
"They claim that their discovery points to the gene having originated in Neanderthal man who lived in Europe for 200,000 years before Homo sapien settlers, the ancestors of modern man, arrived from Africa about 40,000 years ago."
They weren't just apes. They had division of labor. The men would go out in a group and beat an ungulate to death with their bare hands and drag it home where the women, who had been gossiping about their mates various qualities would cook it up while the men complained about their many various hunting injuries.