That is very interesting. I would like to find out more about this. I have wondered for a while why we developed refined technology and Neanderthals (with bigger brains) didn’t. The given explanations –lack of language etc. don’t work that well. They may not have had the same language capabilities that we have, but they were surely capable of some quite sophisticated communication. If not, what exactly were they doing with their 1600 c.c. brains on the cold winter nights? The idea that Neanderthals were mentally lacking is based on wishful thinking; for most of prehistory our technology was not that much better than theirs.

My guess is that the difference in technology between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals was a question of skin covering not brains. Neanderthal tools could not (I don’t think) be used to make effective clothing, perhaps some rough cloak, but nothing that would withstand the tundra-like conditions of Southern Europe in the Ice Ages. Therefore, since they clealry did survive these conditions, they must have been biologically adapted to the cold i.e. they had a good hairy pelt. We could not survive in those conditions without head-to-toe covering (as with the Inuit). So, Neanderthals evolved biologically to withstand the cold, while we, being essentially a warm weather animal, developed tools to do the same. Presumably the ice ages would have chilled off much of North and sub-tropical Africa, so some of the early humans moving up from Africa would have been driven to develop clothing technology before they reached Central Asia and Europe. Although I do not have a scrap of evidence, I think it is fairly likely that it was a response to colder weather and the need for clothing –and not a different brain structure or higher feeling- that drove the refinement in tool making that gave us an edge over the Neanderthals.