>Art, according to the reports, Humans and Neanderthals became
>divergent at least some 500,000 to 750,000 years ago.  Neanderthal
>appear to be a species restricted primarily to Europe.  Archeologist
>and anthropologist believe that they were lacking in tools and
>speech.  What tools they posed appear to be taken from humans, sites
>lacking in evidence that they actually used the tools.  Whether they
>were having "relations" is speculative.  What does appear to be from
>the DNA evidence is they were not having offspring.

Any member of Hominidae is can be considered to be human. All members
of genus Homo are human by definition, including H. neanderthalensis
(the species was named after the Neander Valley [thal]).

I'm not sure how good the evidence for the lack of neanderthal-made
tools and lack of speech is. Anthropologists are notably cranky and
the science is fraught with... problematic ideas. Certainly the
cranial capacity of H. neanderthalensis was larger than that of H.
sapiens, not that brain-size necessarily has much to do with
intelligence (look at octopuses and living dinosaurs of Psittacidae
and Corvidae).
--
Andrew Grebneff
Dunedin
New Zealand
Fossil preparator
Seashell, Macintosh, VW/Toyota van nut
‚ Opinions stated are mine, not of the University of Otago
"There is water at the bottom of the ocean"  - Talking Heads

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