Why not call them people. They had family’s, were capable of communication and could plan for future events. I’m not sure if they ever suffered from an existential crisis or could count their fingers but they did have art (sculpture and cave painting) and entertainment (sex and music-percussion only).

The unimaginably massive volcanic eruption of Toba in Sumatra blotted out the sun, covered southern Asia with feet of ash and might have knocked the populations of each human-like species (there were three at the time…homo sapiens, Neanderthals and homo erectus) below 10,000.

That event was followed immediately by a volcanic winter that quickly turned into the last ice age before today.

So not only did the Neanderthals have to deal with the usual nightmare of ice age survival, they had to do it after withstanding the most epic disaster in human history.

The Neanderthals survived all that, but homo sapiens used their intellect and adaptability to leap ahead of the Neanderthals and homo erectus. Basically, this disaster-turned-ice-age was exactly what our species needed to supplant the other hominids — who had a big head start on us since we had stayed in Africa until 100,000 years ago.

OK, sorry for the rant. This is just a fascinating topic that’s always made me curious.