(October 22, 2015 at 6:26 pm)Yeauxleaux Wrote: Are we still surprised by this?
We know there were several other now extinct humanoid species we are closely related to, it's really not surprising they could use tools and I'd assume they could probably talk as well. Neanderthals survived for hundredes of thousands of years in then austere Europe, I doubt they could have done that without at least primitive tools.
Neaderthals used so-called "Mousterian" tool kits, more primitive than the kits used by H. Sapiens' "Aechulean" kits. Mousterian tool kits used by Neanderthals didn't really evolve much, but they are documented in the fossil record.