Neandertals famously had larger cranial capacities than modern humans, and, have gone through multiple phases of de- and re-humanization. A few weeks ago there was a revision of the idea that Neandertals in France ~30,000 years ago adopted some aspects of modern human culture through diffusion. This was a support for the Neandertal "ooga-booga" thesis. In contrast last spring we were treated to the possibility that most human beings have trace but non-trivial Neandertal ancestry. This naturally made Neandertals seem a little less primitive, since we don't like to perceive ourselves as primitive. A new article in Current Biology supports the position for the primitive Neanderal, Brain development after birth differs between Neanderthals and modern humans:
Neanderthals had brain sizes comparable to modern humans, but their brain cases were elongated and not globular as in Homo sapiens...It has, therefore, been suggested that modern humans and Neanderthals reached large brain sizes ...
