Neaderthals and their advanced brains.

A science headline on a paper just out yesterday:

Homo sapiens and Neanderthals share high cerebral cortex integration into adulthood

From a synopsis by the authors of the study:

A surprising result

The results of our analyses surprised us. Tracking change over deep time across dozens of primate species, we found humans had particularly high levels of brain integration, especially between the parietal and frontal lobes.

But we also found we're not unique. Integration between these lobes was similarly high in Neanderthals too.

I know it sounds flippant, but I'm not surprised.  I would have expected our brains, and Neanderthal brains, to be just about the same.  And that's because I also believed this:

There's another important implication. It's increasingly clear that Neanderthals, long characterized as brutish dullards, were adaptable, capable and sophisticated people.

I, of course, maintain that Neanderthals weren't a different species at all, but simply a subspecies of our species.