This month's National Geographic's cover story is about Neanderthals! Sweet! It was a good article, all about the latest DNA findings and stuff- with a reconstruction of a female Neanderthal done as accurately as currently possible.
The frustration with anything Neanderthal-related is that we'll never know anything for sure. We have best guesses and intriguing hypotheses, a few fossils, and that's about it. Tantalizing, fascinating, but not quite satisfying. I want to know what they looked like, how they lived. I want there to still be Neanderthals!

Something called Edge asked a very interesting question of some of the worlds' foremost scientists and thinkers:
WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?
There are some pretty interesting answers, though I haven't gone through them all. I especially like Tor NØrretranders' answer.
My own answer, without taking too much time to think, is I believe Neanderthals survived until as recently as 5000 years ago, rather than going extinct 25,000 years ago as currently accepted.
So what's your answer?

You know what there aren't enough of? Neanderthal songs. In fact, I can't think of even one off the top of my head, though I am sure there are some out there. So that's your assignment for today- find me some caveman songs. Eithre songs written by Neanderthals, or about them. Whichever.
Here's one from National Geographic- "Cannibal Neandertal". Catchy.

Maybe you read Daniel Keyes' short story "Flowers For Algernon" in high school, or saw one of the tv shows or movies based on it. The original short story won a Hugo award in 1960. Certainly a classic.
But I bet you've never read the story that came in second in Hugo voting that year- Philip José Farmer's "The Alley Man". I came across it more or less by accident as it was in one of the many short story anthologies I buy for a buck in used bookstores that serve me so well on nightshift at the coal mine.
The alley man is Old Man Paley, the last surviving Neanderthal, a one-armed bottlepicker who lives off the refuse of us False Folks, worshipping the Old Guy in the Sky and patiently waiting for the time when he can rise again.
Or maybe he's just an ugly and demented old derelict whose biggest dream is to be a wrestler on tv, billed as the Awful Apeman.
Anyways, a great find. You should read it- the real pleasure is listening to Old Man's constant stream of chatter as he recounts his people's history to a wide-eyed anthropology student. Obviously I ate it right up since it was about Neanderthals. Or probably was about Neanderthals.
Speaking of Neanderlit, I recommend Dave Wolverton's Serpent Catch and Path of the Hero, which has Neanderthals and mammoths and all kinds of crazy things.
I'm sure you've at least heard of, if not read, Clan of the Cave Bear. Good book, could have used more actual cave bears though. Still, it has plenty of Neanderthals.

Whatever happened to the Neanderthals? They used to dominate Europe- imagine a social predator with the mental capacity of a modern human coupled with the brute strength of a gorilla. Common wisdom says they died out around 30,000 years ago, possibly at the hands of Homo sapiens- though another theory suggests they were ill-adapted to the post-ice age climate. National Geographic has a news item that suggests Neanderthals and sapiens interbred, and that the Neander population was genetically absorbed into ours. The bottom line is, we don't really know what happened to them.
What if they survived much later than the fossil record shows? Everyone knows the fossil record is more of a broad spectrum tool rather than a precise measuring rod. A difference of, say, 25,000 years is miniscule in geological terms. I've always thought this little throwaway paragraph in the Bible was intriguing:

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. Genesis 6:4

Certainly the massive Neanderthals would have seemed godlike to the much smaller sapiens. To me, the cryptic nature of this passage suggests two things- that the Nephilim were fairly common knowledge and wouldn't have needed to be explained much beyond that description, and that whoever they were, they interbred with "humans".
What do you think? I'd be proud to have a little Neanderthal blood in me.