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After 150 years of research we can now appreciate the Neanderthals for what they were: a human species capable of making complex tool forms that were employed to utilise a wide range of food resources; who undertook large scale migration; and who regularly displayed aspects of intimate sociality. In many ways the Neanderthals are strikingly similar to Homo sapiens but with one key difference: Neanderthals seemingly did not participate in so-called material symbolic behaviour. As a result, we often view the Neanderthals as being outside the realm of modernity, even though increasing evidence suggests that the differences between our two species were minor. This talk will provide a general overview of the Neanderthals, their environment, and their behaviour; followed by the presentation of a new energetic hypothesis that has been developed to explain the lack of Neanderthal material symbolic output and which suggests that Neanderthal ‘symbolism’ is much more subtle in its expression than it is in their more extrovert cousins, Homo sapiens.