Why were Neanderthals less intelligent than modern humans despite having bigger brains?
While the Neanderthal brain was “bigger,” so was their body. When you compare the brain to body ratio, humans and Neanderthals are pretty much the same. The “less intelligent” is based more on their technology and behavior then brain size. Throughout their existence their tool kit remained the same. The same tools are found at the start of the species as well as at the end.They also remained focused on hunting reindeer and on an almost exclusively meat diet.Partly this was due to their high calorie requirements (5,000 a day) but they never fished or exploited the other food resources. The only changes to their technology and the only art appears at the end of the specie’s existence and clearly results from contact with early modern humans.
