Neanderthals Trivia
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48 free Neanderthals trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Neanderthals trivia quiz covers the archaic humans who lived across Europe and western Asia until about 40,000 years ago. It starts with the discovery story: the 1829 Engis skull nobody understood, the Gibraltar skull mistaken for a modern human, the 1856 bones from the Kleine Feldhofer Grotte, the hymn writer the valley was named after, William King's species name, Rudolf Virchow's diagnosis of disease and Marcellin Boule's slouching Old Man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints. The science questions cover the long low skull, brow ridge and occipital bun, brains bigger than ours, the hyoid bone and FOXP2, Mousterian tools and the Levallois technique, birch tar glue, wooden spears, elephant hunts, seals and dolphins at Gibraltar, cannibalism, the Shanidar flower burial, the disputed Divje Babe flute and the golden eagle. The genetics questions cover Svante Pääbo's 2010 genome, the Vindija bones, Denisovans, how much Neanderthal DNA modern Eurasians carry and why the species vanished. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is shown on every question. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation. Try our human evolution and prehistory quizzes next.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly when did Neanderthals become extinct?
About 40,000 years ago
About 40,000 years ago Neanderthals vanish from most of Europe and Asia, just as modern humans were spreading across the continent; a few Iberian groups may have held on somewhat longer.
Q 02Which feature of the modern human face did Neanderthals lack?
A projecting chin
A projecting chin is a Homo sapiens trademark: the Neanderthal lower jaw sloped back without one, while the middle of the face, with its big broad nose, pushed forward.
Q 03After whom was the Neander Valley named?
A hymn writer
A hymn writer: the valley was renamed in 1850 for Joachim Neander, a 17th-century pastor who wrote 'Praise to the Lord, the Almighty'. His surname is a Greek form of Neumann, 'new man'.
Q 04The Neander Valley that named the species lies near which German city?
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf lies just west of the gorge, which limestone quarrying destroyed, cave and cliff alike; the find spot was pinned down again only in 1997, with more Neanderthal bone in the rubble.
Q 05Germany's 1901 spelling reform dropped which letter from the place name Neanderthal?
The letter H
The letter H went when Thal, 'valley', became Tal, so the place is now Neandertal; the species name keeps its old th because zoology's rule of priority fixes the first published spelling.
Q 06Which geologist, working in Galway, proposed the name Homo neanderthalensis in 1863?
William King
William King named the species at an 1863 meeting, then had second thoughts: within a year he was arguing for a separate genus, likening the braincase to a chimpanzee's.
Q 07Which pathologist argued in 1872 that Neanderthal features were signs of disease, stalling research for decades?
Rudolf Virchow
Rudolf Virchow examined the bones himself and judged them a deformed modern man, arthritic, rickety and scarred by old injuries; an opponent of Darwin, he never accepted that humans descended from apes.
Q 08Decades before the Neander Valley find, a Neanderthal child's skull was dug up in 1829 in which country?
Belgium
Belgium: Philippe-Charles Schmerling found the Engis skull near Liège among the bones of extinct animals and saw that it was ancient, but it was recognised as Neanderthal only in 1936.
Q 09A Neanderthal skull found at Forbes' Quarry in 1848, before the more famous Neander Valley find, came from where?
Gibraltar
Gibraltar 1 was labelled simply as an ancient human and left in obscurity; only in 1864, after Darwin's Origin of Species had revived interest in fossil humans, was it shown to scientists in Britain.
Q 10What is the bony projection at the back of a Neanderthal skull called?
An occipital bun
An occipital bun is not a Neanderthal exclusive: some of Europe's early modern humans had one too, and so do some people alive today.
Q 11A 2020 find at Abri du Maras in France showed that Neanderthals could make what?
Twisted cord
Twisted cord: a scrap of three-ply string spun from the inner bark of a conifer was found stuck to a stone flake, direct evidence that Neanderthals worked plant fibres.
Q 12How did average Neanderthal brain volume compare with that of people alive today?
Slightly larger than ours
Slightly larger than ours: Neanderthal brains were as large as ours and often larger, in proportion to their heavier, more muscular bodies.
Q 13A stretch of DNA inherited from Neanderthals has been linked to more severe cases of which disease?
COVID-19
Q 21Which transitional tool culture of France is linked to the last Neanderthals?
Châtelperronian
The Châtelperronian is the one Upper Palaeolithic toolkit credited to Neanderthals, perhaps made as they picked up techniques from incoming modern humans; who made it is still argued over.
Q 22What does the 'rodeo rider' hypothesis blame for the many healed injuries on Neanderthal skeletons?
Close-range hunting
Close-range hunting: the fractures match those of rodeo riders, who tangle with big, dangerous animals. A rival view blames animal attacks, and early modern humans show similar injuries.
Q 23Which Neanderthal from an Iraqi cave lived for years with a withered arm, a damaged eye and probable deafness?
Shanidar 1
COVID-19: a 2020 study traced the main genetic risk factor for severe illness to a segment of chromosome 3 inherited from Neanderthals, carried by about half of people in South Asia.
Q 14Which stone tool industry are Neanderthals associated with?
Mousterian
Mousterian tools, named after the Le Moustier rock shelters in France, were struck from a stone core shaped in advance; the method then went almost unchanged for over 100,000 years.
Q 15What adhesive did Neanderthals produce by the earliest known dry distillation process?
Birch tar
Birch tar comes from heating birch bark with little air; Neanderthals may have been making it as early as 200,000 years ago, using it to fix stone points to wooden shafts.
Q 16Which Croatian rock shelter, dug from 1899, yielded hundreds of broken Neanderthal bones?
Krapina
Krapina's bones were so broken and jumbled that their excavator, Dragutin Gorjanović-Kramberger, proposed in 1901 that these Neanderthals ate their dead; whether they did is still an open question.
Q 17Which wood were the Clacton and Lehringen spears both made from?
European yew
European yew is both durable and elastic, qualities the spear makers may well have chosen it for on purpose.
Q 18At the 125,000-year-old Neumark-Nord site, which animal did Neanderthals hunt every five or six years?
Straight-tusked elephants
Straight-tusked elephants were the biggest game of their day: the bones of at least 57 lie at the site, systematically butchered, and at another German site a wooden spear was found with one.
Q 19Which marine animals did Neanderthals eat at Vanguard Cave, on the southern tip of Iberia?
Dolphin and monk seal
Dolphin and monk seal remains at Vanguard Cave show that Neanderthals exploited the sea; at Figueira Brava in Portugal they also roasted brown crabs to crack the shells.
Q 20In which French cave did Neanderthals arrange broken stalagmites into rings 176,000 years ago?
Bruniquel Cave
Bruniquel Cave in southwest France holds rings of broken stalagmites built about 176,000 years ago deep inside the cave, showing Neanderthals ventured far underground with fire long before modern humans reached Europe.
Shanidar 1 survived a crushing blow to the head that damaged one eye; he also had a withered right arm and was probably deaf. That he lived on suggests others in his group cared for him.
Q 24Ralph Solecki's famous claim about a Shanidar Cave burial involved what grave offering?
Flowers
Flowers: pollen clustered around the Shanidar 4 skeleton led Ralph Solecki to argue that the man was laid to rest with blooms, though burrowing rodents or bees may have carried the pollen in.
Q 25The disputed Divje Babe 'flute' from Slovenia is made from the femur of which animal?
A cave bear
A cave bear femur pierced by spaced holes, found in 1995, is shown in Slovenia's National Museum as a Neanderthal flute; many researchers think a carnivore's teeth made the holes.
Q 26At Abric Romaní rock shelter, Neanderthals kept a row of evenly spaced fires, probably for what purpose?
Keeping warm while sleeping
Keeping warm while sleeping: the eight hearths line the rock wall at even intervals, leaving room for one sleeper on either side of each fire.
Q 27Which bone from the Kebara 2 skeleton, almost identical to ours, suggests Neanderthals could speak?
The hyoid
The hyoid, a small throat bone that anchors the tongue, was found with the Kebara 2 skeleton in Israel in 1983; it matches ours closely, though it can't reveal the whole vocal tract.
Q 28Scratches and heavy wear on Neanderthal front teeth show they often used their mouths as what?
A third hand
A third hand: Neanderthals gripped food, hides and other materials between their big front teeth while working on them, leaving scratch marks on the enamel.
Q 29Bones from which cave provided the DNA for the first Neanderthal genome?
Vindija Cave
Vindija Cave in northern Croatia supplied three bones for the 2010 draft; early dates hinting that its Neanderthals overlapped with modern humans were later traced to contamination.
Q 30Which geneticist won the 2022 Nobel Prize for sequencing the genomes of extinct hominins?
Svante Pääbo
Svante Pääbo began in 1984 by coaxing DNA from a 2,400-year-old mummy and went on to read the Neanderthal genome; his father, Sune Bergström, had won the same Nobel Prize in 1982.