In a debunking TED-Ed lesson written by anthropologist Bruce Hardy and animated by Team Tumult, narrator Adrian Dannat explains how Neanderthals have been misunderstood for centuries and how the persistent myths about them are not true. In fact, two different excavations from the 1950s showed that Neanderthals cared about their community.
Both excavation sites showed signs of burial, all suggesting that Neanderthals went beyond immediate, practical concerns for survival and cared for their ailing and dead.
He also says that Neanderthals never really went extinct, they were just absorbed by Homo sapiens.
Theories from rampant cannibalism, to disease and climate change, to aggressive Homo sapiens have been floated. But another idea is that, because Neanderthals lived in smaller groups, as they interbred with larger populations of Homo sapiens, they just sort of got gradually absorbed.
