[duopixel]

It seems every article on Neanderthals has to be prefaced with a story of how we believed that they were brute club-wielding cave dwellers, but this discovery has changed the way we think about them... Can't journalists find a different way of spinning this story?

[bsanr2]

Unfortunately, anthropological "hierarchalism" driven by race-conscious notions of personhood has made these regular reminders necessary. We still haven't completely shed the unscientific caricatures of neanderthals that were constructed for sociopolitical purposes (and before it was discovered that most of Europe and Asia [and possibly the rest of humanity] is partially descended from them).