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{{subpages}} For decades the Neanderthals have been viewed as a hunched, hairy, stumbling, stupid cave man that lived tens of thousands of years ago. This image can be highly attributed to [[Marcellin Boule]], <ref>Stringer, Christopher, and Clive Gamble. In Search of the Neanderthals: Solving the Puzzle of Human Origins. New York: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1993.</ref> a French paleoanthropologist at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1908, at La Chapelle-aux-Saints in southwestern France (see [[#Sites and Significant Fossils]] below) a nearly complete male skeleton was excavated and Boule spent the better part of three years examining this specimen. The man was old in terms of Neanderthal standards, aging between 40 and 50 years old and suffered from severe arthritis in his spine. This fact was discovered long after Boule described him as hunched over, practicing an inefficient shuffling gait type of bipedalism. His preconceptions, opposed to scientific objectivity, resulted in the misconception about the genus as a whole. Today this is reflected in not only in normal perception but shown in popular culture, specifically the insurance company that concludes their process is "So Easy, a Caveman Can Do It." Interestingly, these commercials counter react the misconceptions by having offended cavemen be present and engaged in modern, human-like behavior, highlighting the misconception placed by Boule a hundred years ago. The Neanderthals (Also spelled ''Neandertal''. The original German spelling includes an ''h'' but is pronounced as if no ''h'' is present.) <ref>Kenneth L. Feder ''The Past in Perspective: An Introduction to Human Prehistory'' 4th ed. McGraw-Hill, 2007.</ref> are an extinct nonmodern hominid that come chronologically extremely close to the modern era, becoming extinct less than 30,000 years ago. The classic Neanderthal traits are found from about 75,000 to 35,000 years ago, but it is difficult to date the initial appearance of this species. Without great dating techniques, the best early estimate comes from the Moula Guercy site in France dating the earliest appearance of Neanderthals to 120,000 years ago.

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