Neanderthal brains were not particularly unusual, suggesting their cognition wasn't either

What is it about?

Differences in brain anatomy between two large modern human samples were found to be similar to published estimates of Neanderthal vs. their contemporaries. Furthermore, predictions about cognitive ability from brain anatomy are so weak that implied average differences in Neanderthal cognition would have been tiny, with huge overlap with other groups. This suggests cognitive limitations were unlikely to have been responsible for the demise of Neanderthals

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Photo by Crawford Jolly on Unsplash

Photo by Crawford Jolly on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The evolutionary lineage leading to modern humans evolved very large brains over the past ~2.5 million years. This has long been used to suggest our lineage underwent significant cognitive evolution during this time. While this is reasonable, specific evolutionary hypotheses about brain evolution in our ancestors often do not take into account the wide range of variation that can be found among modern human populations. They also rarely acknowledge the tiny associations that can be found between brain anatomy and cognitive abilities. We show that the estimated differences in Neanderthal brains fit comfortably among the range of differences found among modern human populations, and the estimated differences in cognition would have been tiny (with huge population overlap).