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Not according to another comment where they talk about different rates of maturation, and dietary differences. Neanderthals needed substantially more calories. IDK enough to provide more details but it seems like there are several scientific distinctions.

There's no evidence for lack of structured religion.

Of course they had religion. They talked...not grunted. They had opposable thumbs. They had tribes. They got weird. They defended their territories and attacked weaker people.

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I think i am neanderthal then I eat like a truck

This was theorized about 20 years ago but people thought the proponents of it were crazy. I thought it made a lot of sense and now it seems that that's what the establishment is agreeing with.

It's amazing how consensus can change

As to your last point, I addressed that in my comment. As for your comment about "grocery store" cannibalism, you realize humanity and neanderthals went through an Ice Age? We had to eat what ever we could to survive, and humans/neanderthals from other tribes would've been free game. As for your ritualism comment, there has to be origins for rituals, and society and religion has to exist for rituals to exist. There's no evidence of structured society or religion in that time period. Cannibalism would've been a last resort survival tactic, not a prestigious event.

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Yes, Neaderthals required about 30-50% more calories daily than Homo Sapien Sapiens. This meant that they were less able to survive on foraging than Homo Sapien Sapeins were, and both the men and women were involved in hunts. Since hunting poses greater physical danger, the adult mortality rate for Neaderthal women would have been higher than for Homo Sapien Sapien women. Neaderthals also hit sexual maturity a few years earlier than modern humans do, meaning that they generally had less time in adolescence to hone their skills before being expected to perform the same tasks as adults. All these factors would have limited their population growth and made life as an adult more dangerous. I can see this as being a major reason why Neaderthals were forced to breed with Homo Sapien Sapiens as their own numbers dwindled.

The concept of species seems vague and not very scientific. If sapiens and Neanderthal can commonly interbreed, what definition is there of species other than they have some distinctive features in their bones? Considering modern races or ethnic groups of homo sapien can also be identified by their phenotype/appearance while living or as skeletons/fossil why do we consider Neanderthals a separate species, or subspecies? Isn’t it more accurate that Neanderthals were just a distinctive looking group of the same species as Homo Sapien?

If I remember correctly cannibalism is usually ritualistic. You get to terrorize your victims and their families/tribes and also get to absorb their juju.

"Grocery store" cannibalism for calories is rare.

Is it cannibalism if we go out and hunt gorillas or chimps?

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I'm a complete layman here, but it makes me wonder if Neanderthals were bred out of existence more than anything. I heard from PBS Eons that it's conjectured that Neanderthals had greater nutritional needs, and that it's possible hybrids between Neanderthals and Sapiens were infertile for one sex (males I think?). If Sapiens was more adept at gathering resources, it would follow that some number of Neanderthals might successfully join Human communities and survive to pass their genes on to the Sapiens population. If all-Sapiens and blended communities were doing better at survival than all-Neanderthal communities, that would eventually lead to the extinction of the Neanderthals while preserving some of their genetics in primarily-Sapiens descendants.

I do wonder how migration of other groups into Europe that did not have Neanderthal ancestry affected the distribution of Neanderthal genetics in the native European populations. Could that have possibly diluted the contribution of Neanderthal ancestry of some European groups to current levels?

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I think we ate each other equally. Most primates will become cannibals of the need arises. Not really cannibalism if it's another species, though, but you get my point. A neanderthal would gladly eat a homosapien if they had to, just like we would gladly eat them.

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