We know more facts about Neanderthals than any other extinct humans. Many thousands of their artefacts and fossils have been found, including several nearly complete skeletons.. As for my original question, this author maintains that Neanderthals originated in Ekurope or Adia perhaps as much as 500,000 years ago. This, of coure, depends on the distribution of our common ancestor -- Neanderthals are now considereed to be a separate species, closely related to Homo sapiens but distinct.We also know about their genetic make-up, as several Neanderthal genomes have now been reconstructed from ancient DNA obtained from their fossils
At any rate, do read the article -- it's somewhat lengthy, but very informative and quite fascainating,