They say you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your relatives. Unless you're a paleontologist tracing the lineage of the human race, in which case choosing your relatives is a full-time job. And the most vexing choice of all concerns our ancestral relation to the Neanderthals, the craggy-browed cave dwellers who vanished from Europe some 30,000 years ago.
Homo neanderthalensis was the last hominid species to rival our own. Like Homo sapiens, its members had big brains, used tools, lit fires, and buried their dead. They thrived for 200,000 years in severe ice age climates, from Britain to Uzbekistan. When H. sapiens began to arrive from the south, the two species dwelled alongside each other for thousands of years. But experts disagree about how they got along. Did they make love or war? Were the indigenous tribes killed or coddled by the newcomers? Why didn't the Neanderthals last?
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