by Jamie Henzy — From the dis­cov­ery of the first Ne­an­derthal skull in a Bel­gian cave in 1826, a bone of con­tention among Homo sapi­ens has been the ex­tent of our re­la­tion­ship to Homo ne­an­derthalis, who dis­ap­peared from the fos­sil record ~30,000 years ago. Like scrappy cousins we'd rather not claim, we've at­tempted to dis­tance our­selves...