Research finds Neanderthals probably weren't brutish, inferior cave men

Washington

MAYBE it is their famously protruding brow ridge or perhaps it is the now-discredited notion that they were primitive scavengers too dumb to use language or symbolism, but somehow Neanderthals picked up a reputation as brutish, dim and mannerless cretins.

Yet the latest research on the history and habits of Neanderthals suggests that such portrayals of them are entirely undeserved. It turns out that Neanderthals were capable hunters who used tools and probably had some semblance of culture; and the DNA record shows that if you trace your ancestry to Europe or Asia, chances are very good that you have some Neanderthal DNA in your own genome.

The bad rap began when the first Neanderthal skull was discovered around 1850 in Germany, said Paola Villa, an archaeologist at the University of Colorado. "The morphological features of these skulls - big eyebrows, no chin - led to the idea that they were very different from us, and therefore inferior," she said. While the majority of archaeologists no longer believe this, she added, the idea that Neanderthals were inferior, br…