We haven’t been very kind to Neanderthals since their remains were first unearthed in the 19th century, often characterizing them as lumbering dimwits or worse. Even today, their name is sometimes hurled at misbehaving members of our own species, though there is no evidence they engaged in any kind of prehistoric hooliganism.
No other structures of this kind have so far been discovered. But there have been many other hints that Neanderthal minds were occupied with things many researchers did not expect, says archaeologist April Nowell of the University of Victoria in Canada. The author of a 2021 book, Growing Up in the Ice Age, Nowell outlines the most exciting new discoveries in a 2023 article, “Rethinking Neandertals,” in the Annual Review of Anthropology.
