article_snippet: The findings will add to mounting evidence that Neanderthals were not the slow-witted and primative creatures Neanderthals are often portrayed as.
article_snippet: Instead Neanderthals are emerging as having had a sophisticated culture, were highly intelligent and may have even created art.
article_snippet: It has been around 30,000 years since the ancestors of modern-day humans are thought to have wiped out the ancient Neanderthals.
article_snippet: Neanderthals and modern humans are thought to have co-existed for thousands of years and interbred, meaning Europeans now have roughly 2 per cent Neanderthal DNA.
article_snippet: Scientists have found that part of our HLA system, which helps white blood cells to identify and destroy foreign material in the body, could have come from Neanderthals.
article_snippet: Our traditional view of Neanderthals, shown above in the reconstruction at the Croatian Natural History Museum in London, is of a primative and stupid species but new evidence suggests a primative and stupid species were  intelligent and cultured .
article_snippet: The study adds to theories that Neanderthals evolved Neanderthals characteristic looks slowly, and intermittently, over hundreds of thousands of years.
article_snippet: The ancient skulls, dating back 400,000 years, show Neanderthal-like features in the face and teeth, while other parts of the skulls, including the brain case, resembled those of more primitive human ancestors.
article_snippet: Similar evidence from France dated to around 35,000 years ago is sometimes held up as an example of neanderthals copying us. '
article_snippet: But the date and location of the Krapina material means that this is clear evidence of independent Neanderthal innovation at independent Neanderthal innovation best. '
article_snippet: The last five years has seen our view of Neanderthals revolutionised - it is time to put the stupid cave man image to bed once and for all.'
article_snippet: Neanderthals first emerged around 280,000 years ago, spreading to inhabit much of Europe and parts of Asia, but Neanderthals eventually died out 40,000 years ago.
article_snippet: The reason for Neanderthals demise was often put down to being a more primative species of human that was unable to compete against the more sophisticated Homo sapiens.
article_snippet: Neanderthals were depicted as thuggish cavemen that scraped an existence on the cold lands of ice age Europe.
article_snippet: However, a series of discoveries are now putting Neanderthals into a new light.
article_snippet: DNA analysis has also shown that Neanderthals carried the same genes that are thought to have enabled modern humans to speak.
article_snippet: The traditional image of Neanderthals as primative creatures like above is no longer holding up to evidence .
highlights_snippet: This contradicts traditional views of Neanderthals as primitive and stupid .
  