Neanderthals were not less intelligent than modern humans, scientists find

Neanderthal and modern human skulls. Photograph: Sabena Jane Blackbird/Alamy

Scientists have concluded that Neanderthals were not the primitive dimwits they are commonly portrayed to have been.

The view of Neanderthals as club-wielding brutes is one of the most enduring stereotypes in science, but researchers who trawled the archaeological evidence say the image has no basis whatsoever.

They said scientists had fuelled the impression of Neanderthals being less than gifted in scores of theories that purport to explain why they died out while supposedly superior modern humans survived.

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