Above all the issue that is almost never addressed is that Neandertals had brains that were significantly larger than those of modern people—1.8 liters for Neandertals versus 1.4 for modern people, according to one calculation. This is more than the difference between modern Homo sapiens and late Homo erectus , a species we are happy to regard as barely human. The argument put forward is that although our brains were smaller, they were somehow more efficient. I believe I speak the truth when I observe that nowhere else in human evolution is such an argument made.
尤其重要的是，有个问题几乎从来没有人解决过，那就是尼安德特人的脑比现代人明显要大——据测算，尼安德特人的脑量是1.8升，而现代人是1.4升。这种差别比现代智人和晚期直立人——我们乐于认为他们算不上是人类——的差别要大。提出的理由是，尽管我们的大脑要小些，但是不知怎的更加管用。我注意到，在有关人类进化方面，别处从未有过如此惊人的论点。我相信我说的是实话。

So why then, you may well ask, if the Neandertals were so stout and adaptable and cerebrally well endowed, are they no longer with us? One possible (but much disputed) answer is that perhaps they are. Alan Thorne is one of the leading proponents of an alternative theory, known as the multiregional hypothesis, which holds that human evolution has been continuous—that just as australopithecines evolved into Homo habilis and Homo heidelbergensis became over time Homo neanderthalensis, so modernHomo sapiens simply emerged from more ancient Homo forms.Homo erectus is, on this view, not a separate species but just a transitional phase. Thus modern Chinese are descended from ancient Homo erectus forebears in China, modern Europeans from ancient European Homo erectus, and so on. "Except that for me there are no Homo erectus," says Thorne. "I think it's a term which has outlived its usefulness. For me, Homo erectus is simply an earlier part of us. I believe only one species of humans has ever left Africa, and that species is Homo sapiens."
因此，你也许会问，既然尼安德特人是如此强壮，又具有如此强的适应性和较大的脑量，那么他们为什么没有生活到今天呢？有一种回答（不过还有很大争议）是，他们也许还在二艾伦·桑恩是一种被称为“多地区起源一假说的最主要的倡导者之一，这种理论主张人类进化是一个持续的过程——由南方古猿进化到能人和海德堡人，再进化到尼安德特人，因此现代智人是从较古老的人属进他而来的。根据这种观点，直立人并不是一个独立的种属，而只是一个过渡阶段。因此，现代中国人是远古中国直立人的后裔，现代欧洲人刚是远古欧洲直立人的后裔，如此等等。 “在我看来，根本就没有直立人，”桑恩说，“我认为这个概念已经过时，在我看来，直立人只不过是人类的早期阶段，我认为只有一个人类种属离开了非洲，那就是智人。”