Neanderthals have a bad reputation largely due to historical misconceptions and outdated stereotypes. Early depictions painted them as brutish, unintelligent and uncivilised, based on the incomplete and misinterpreted fossil evidence available at the time. This view was reinforced by the need to distinguish modern humans as superior and more advanced.
However, recent research has shown that Neanderthals were much more sophisticated than previously thought. They created tools, had a form of language, engaged in symbolic behaviours and even buried their dead.
Carlo Moretti, Verona: Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com. Almost certainly the haircut.
Paige Madison has convincingly argued in recent years that the dismissal of Neanderthals as brutes goes back to the discovery at Feldhofer in the Neander valley in Germany in 1856. Based on the size and shape of the skull, leading geologists, naturalists and anatomists concluded that the individual must have been a dim-witted brute.
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