Apparently I'm not the only one thinking about Neanderthals. There's an article in the Times today that says some of the things I was trying to say about them, but says them a lot better. The writer quotes H.G. Wells, who apparently had the same thought that I did: "He thought the Neanderthals had lived on, not in our genes, but in our tales and terrors. 'The legends of ogres and man-eating giants that haunt the childhood of the world,' he wrote, 'may descend to us from those ancient days of fear.'"

H.G. Wells was kind of melodramatic.