This is the skull of a juvenile Neanderthal excavated form a cave site in 1909. A partial skeleton was recovered from the site, although the excavation was not performed in a controlled scientific manner, and much of the contextual information that is so important to any fossil site was lost. Most of the skeleton was destroyed at the end of World War II in bombing raids by the Allies. The skull displays many typical Neanderthal anatomical traits, including the development of an occipital bun and a prognathic face in the area of the nose. The browridges of this individual are not as well developed as in some other examples of Neanderthal skulls, but this may reflect the fact that this individual was a juvenile at the time of death; thus the browridges were not completely formed.

The importance of the cave site of Le Moustier lies not in the partial skeleton located there, but in the tool assemblage recovered, which gives the name to the "Mousterian" tool tradition. The Mousterian tradition is characterized by flake tools that were detached from of a prepared stone core. This technique allowed flakes of predetermined shape to be removed and fashioned into tools from a single suitable stone. This technology differs from earlier "core tool" traditions, such as the Acheulean of Homo erectus, in which a suitable stone was "reduced down" to a tool form by removal of flakes off the surface.

(For an example of an Acheulean handaxe tool click here.)

It is not readily certain that the individual came form the exact occupation levels that yielded the stone tool assemblages. At other sites, though, Neanderthal remains are unequivocally associated with Mousterian tools. Recent dating of the cave site indicates that the levels associated with occupation are rather recent, less than 45,000 years old.