How to Use Neanderthal in a Sentence

Neanderthal

noun
  • That points to Neanderthals not harvesting crabs with nets, which would have caught a wider range of animals.
    — Kiona N. Smith, Ars Technica, 2023-02-22
  • So some Neanderthal in a pickup truck (and another in a car) came up from behind and flashed their headlights.
    — Ticked Off, Orlando Sentinel, 2024-11-05
  • Blood Type and Health The lack of variety in blood type within Neanderthals may have led them to their demise.
    — Paul Smaglik, Discover Magazine, 2025-01-24
  • Since the Neanderthal discovery, the start date for human prehistory has been pushed farther and farther back.
    — Maya Jasanoff, The New Yorker, 2024-05-06
  • Judging from relics uncovered in a cave in Iberia, Spain, the act of collecting may stretch at least as far back as our Neanderthal ancestry.
    — Andrew Paul, Popular Science, 2024-11-21
  • An analysis of an inner ear fossil from a young Neanderthal discovered in Spain suggests the child may have had Down syndrome.
    — Will Sullivan, Smithsonian Magazine, 2024-06-27
  • Life New evidence shows Neanderthals got ‘surfer’s ear’ Our relationship with water still matters.
    — Big Think, 2024-06-24
  • The remains of Neanderthals do not show clear evidence of lower intelligence than modern humans, some scientists have argued.
    — Peter Guo, NBC news, 2025-05-28
  • Audiences learned to link modern art to prehistory and inquire about Neanderthal DNA.
    — Stefanos Geroulanos, Twin Cities, 2024-04-10
  • The site could indicate how Neanderthals may have been more caring and emotionally intelligent than previously thought.
    — Jonathan Limehouse, USA TODAY, 2024-05-02
  • Some of their skeletal features resembled those of Homo sapiens, while others were more Neanderthal-like, making the species difficult to classify.
    — Mindy Weisberger, CNN Money, 28 Aug. 2025
  • This all led the scientists to concludes that the most important genetic risk factor for Dupuytren’s disease is the lingering role of Neanderthal ancestry.
    — Tim Newcomb, Popular Mechanics, 2023-07-27
  • The discovery means the two groups, who once interbred and left most humans alive today with traces of Neanderthal DNA, may have overlapped for several thousand years.
    — Katie Hunt, CNN, 2024-02-01
  • Along with the bone tools, jewelry, and even rope that archaeologists have found at other Neanderthal sites, the projectile is one more clue pointing to the fact that Neanderthals were actually pretty sharp.
    — ArsTechnica, 2025-05-01
  • Poetry for Neanderthals for $25: Every card has a word, and your seemingly simple task is to get your team to correctly guess it within the time limit by speaking in single syllables only.
    — Simon Hill, WIRED, 2024-12-19
  • Increasing evidence shows that intermingling once occurred among various hominids—Neanderthals, modern humans, Denisovans, and maybe others—tens of thousands of years ago.
    — Byelizabeth Pennisi, science.org, 2023-06-01
  • During the Middle Paleolithic, when Neanderthals were modern humans’ neighbors, new technologies meant something quite different: new kinds of stone tools that were smaller but could be used for many tasks and lasted for a long time.
    — Ben Marwick, The Conversation, 2025-03-31
  • The word Neanderthal is sometimes used as a synonym for stupid or brutish, but a new fossil analysis has added weight to the hypothesis that our prehistoric cousins actually had collaborative or even compassionate qualities.
    — Frances Vinall The Washington Post, arkansasonline.com, 2024-07-07
  • His lab’s studies have shed light on how humans migrated and adapted to new environments and how traits linked to Neanderthal DNA are gradually being eliminated from the modern human genome.
    — Sacbee.com, 2025-05-12
  • Radiocarbon dating of bone fragments from Ranis, Germany, were shown to have 2.9% Neanderthal ancestry, which the authors believe occurred from a single mixing event common among all non-African individuals.
    — Julia Jacobo, ABC News, 2024-12-12
  • As a 2023 New Yorker article detailing the carnivore craze pointed out, however, studies of Neanderthals have turned up evidence that their diets included dates, tubers and other leafy foods in addition to meat.
    — Steven Kurutz Steven Kurutz, New York Times, 2024-04-30
  • Excavations there uncovered multiple Mousterian residences, indicating Neanderthals may have visited both places.
    — Brendan Rascius, Miami Herald, 2024-06-20

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'Neanderthal.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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