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The contemporary perception of Neanderthals and their stereotypical portrayal has its origins in 19th century Europe. Naturalists and anthropologists were confronted with an increasing number of fossilized bones that that did not match any known taxon. Carl Linnaeuss 1758 Systema Naturae in which he had Homo sapiens introduced as a species without diagnosis and description, was the authoritative encyclopedia of the time. The notion of extinct species was unheard of and if so, would have contradicted the paradigm of the immutability of species and the physical world, which was the infallible product of a single and deliberate act of a creator god. Most scholars simply declared the early Neanderthal fossils to be representatives of early "races" of modern man. Thomas Henry Huxley, a future supporter of Darwin's theory of evolution, saw in the Engis 2 fossil a "man of low degree of civilization". The discovery in the Neandertal he interpreted as to be within the range of variation of modern humans.^[3]

In mid 19th century Germany biological sciences were dominated by Rudolf Virchow, who described the bones as a "remarkable individual phenomenon" and as "plausible individual deformation".^[4] This statement is the reason why the characteristics of the Neanderthals were perceived as a form of pathological skeleton change of modern man in German-speaking countries for many years to come.

August Franz Josef Karl Mayer, an associate of Virchow emphasizes disease, prolonged pain and struggle on comparison with modern human features.^[5] "He confirmed the Neanderthal's rachitic changes in bone development[...]. Mayer argued among other things, that the thigh - and pelvic bones of Neanderthal man were shaped like those of someone who had spent all his life on horseback. The broken right arm of the individual had only healed very badly and the resulting permanent worry lines about the pain were the reason for the distinguished brow ridges. The skeleton was, he speculated, that of a mounted Russian Cossack, who had roamed the region in 1813/14 during the turmoils of the wars of liberation from Napoleon."^[4]

Arthur Keith of Britain and Marcellin Boule of France, were both senior members of their respective national paleontological institutes and among the most eminent paleoanthropologists of the early 20th century. Both men argued that this "primitive" Neanderthal could not be a direct ancestor of modern man. As a result the museum's copy of the almost complete Neanderthal fossil of La Chapelle-aux-Saints was inaccurately mounted in an exaggerated crooked pose with a deformed and heavily curved spine and legs buckled.^[6][7][8][9]

Source:^[10]

Neanderthal Temporal range: Middle–Late Pleistocene
Neanderthal skull at La Chapelle-aux-Saints
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Primates
Suborder:	Haplorhini
Infraorder:	Simiiformes
Family:	Hominidae
Subfamily:	Homininae
Tribe:	Hominini
Genus:	Homo
Species:	H. neanderthalensis
Binomial name
Homo neanderthalensis King, 1864
Range of Homo neanderthalensis, that may extend to include the Okladnikov Cave/Altai Mountains and Mamotnaia/Ural Mountains
Synonyms
Homo mousteriensis hauseri[11] Homo sapiens neanderthalensis[12] Palaeoanthropus neanderthalensis[13]

Neanderthals or Neandertals UK: /niˈændərˌtɑːl/, us also /neɪ/-, -/ˈɑːndər/-, -/ˌtɔːl/, -/ˌθɔːl/)^[14][15] are an extinct species or subspecies of the genus Homo, that was a close relative of modern humans. Both species occupied a common habitat in Europe for several thousand years. Research has so far no universally accepted conclusive explanation as to what caused the Neanderthal's extinction between 40.000 and 28.000 years ago.^[16]

Neanderthal classification has been subject to debate since the discovery of the fdo to this day.^[17] Currently two formal species names reflect the ongoing controversy - Homo neanderthalensis the binominal name of a distinct species and Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, that classifies Neanderthals as a subspecies of Homo sapiens.^[18][19][20]

Sharing a common ancestor of the genus Homo with Homo sapiens, who evolved independently in Africa,^[21] the specie's specific morphology developed in Eurasia during the last 350.000 years, reaching its final, "classical Neanderthal" form approximately 130.000 years ago.^[22]

Neanderthals left a rich fossil record in the limestone caves of Eurasia, from Western Europe to the Altai Mountains in Central Asia and the Ural Mountains in the North to the Levant in the South.^[23] Discoveries include cultural assemblages and Neanderthals are associated with the Mousterian culture, which first appeared approximately 160.000 years ago.^[24][25][26]

Generally small and widely dispersed fossil sites suggest, that Neanderthals lived in less numerous and socially more isolated groups than contemporary Homo sapiens. Tools such as Mousterian flint stone flakes and Levallois points are remarkably sophisticated from the outset, yet they have a slow rate of variability and general technological inertia is noticeable during the entire fossil period. Artefacts are of utilitarian nature, symbolic behavioral traits are undocumented before the arrival of modern humans in Europe around 40.000 to 35.000 years ago.^[27][28]

The Neanderthal genome sequence was successfully generated in 2010 as the central assignment for the Neanderthal genome project.^[29] The DNA structure proved to be 99.7% identical with anatomically modern humans.^[30] Subsequently the genetic relationship is being investigated^[31][32] and ongoing research has yet helped to interpret and verify kinship lines and interbreeding theories with modern humans and other species of the genus Homo and resulting evolutionary implications.^{[33][34][35][36]}

In 2013 researchers announced that the assemblages of at least 40 widely scattered archaeological sites suggest that Neanderthals intentionally buried their dead.^[37] In 2016 a team of researchers found ring structures made of stalagmites fragments inside the Bruniquel Cave, south-western France around 176.000 years old, which were attributed to early Neanderthals. These discoveries might revive the debate on the degree of advancement of Neanderthal's social structure.^[38]