neanderthal adj 1: ill-mannered and coarse and contemptible in behavior or appearance; "was boorish and insensitive"; "the loutish manners of a bully"; "her stupid oafish husband"; "aristocratic contempt for the swinish multitude" [syn: boorish, loutish, oafish, swinish]

The above definition is part of the return for a search of the word "neanderthal" at dictionary.reference.com. Most everyone has heard the word "neanderthal" used as a synonym for rude, or ill-mannered, or even a bit stupid. But where did this notion come from? In truth, we know very little about the day-to-day life of relatively recent societies, so how can we tell that Neanderthals had bad manners?

Well, we can't really.

Much of the misconception appears to be centered around the first truly complete skeleton of the "Neanderthal Man" (Homo neanderthalensis), found at La Chapelle-aux-Saints (to the left). The skeleton was originally reconstructed by the French paleontologist and geologist Pierre Marcellin Boule. In this reconstruction, the skeleton was shown to have a severely curved spine indicative of a stooped, slouching stance and forward flexed hips. The knees were bent during walking and standing, and the head jutted forward. The low vaulted cranium and the large browridge, somewhat reminiscent of that seen in large apes such as gorillas, was taken to indicate a generally primitive early human and a lack of intelligence.

Since this original "reference specimen" was identified, many other complete skeletons of Neanderthals have been found (e.g., La Ferrassie 1: to the right). These specimens did not show evidence of the stooped posture advocated in the reconstruction of La Chapelle. In fact, when compared with a wider sample of Neanderthal and modern human remains, many of the features thought to have been unique to Neanderthals fall within the range of modern human variation. Indeed, Neanderthals turn out to be very similar to modern humans in many respects. Examination of the skeleton in the 1950's showed that the Old Man of La Chapelle suffered from "gross deforming osteoarthritis." Thus, the slouching posture of the original reconstruction may have been based on an unfortunate individual with a deforming disability.

But this isn't quite the whole story. A more recent evaluation of the entire skeleton by Erik Trinkaus*** has shown that, while the Old Man of La Chapelle did suffer from a degenerative joint disease, the deformation caused by this should not have affected Boule's original reconstruction of the individual’s posture. It appears that Boule's own preconceptions about early humans, and his rejection of the hypothesis that Neanderthals were the ancestors of modern humans, led him to reconstruct a stooped, brutish creature, effectively placing Neanderthals on a side branch of the human evolutionary tree. (Boule even gave his reconstruction an opposable big toe like the great apes, but there was no bone deformity that should or could have lead to this interpretation.)