Neanderthals in France? Really?

March 12 -- Tonight Luke taught me something I never knew.  Or maybe I did learn it once upon a time but I definitely forgot this historical fact.  Apparently,  long, long ago, tribes of Neanderthals lived in France.  Spain too.  I find this information fascinating actually.  If it is really true and, according to Luke who is a European history freak, it is true;  I just find it so unbelievably hard to picture.  I mean, the image of a Neanderthal, the stereotype, is someone who is backward in culture and sophistication.  That just doesn't fit with my image of a French person.

Luke also told me that they discovered 'shrooms near the caves the Neanderthals lived in.  That when they wrote on their walls -- their profound life histories -- they were high on 'shrooms.  Now how on earth scientists were able to ascertain that the cave dwellers were stoned when they wrote on the walls, I have no idea.  (And quite frankly, I don't believe that part of Luke's information.  As a teenager, I find that he gets somewhat overly intrigued about drug induced moments in history...)

So here is my image of the whole historical scenario.  If there really were Neanderthals in Spain and France, I am absolutely certain that the French Neanderthals were far more sophisticated, with much nicer clothes and advanced bathing techniques to lend the air of panache which defines the essence of a Frenchman. (or woman.)   Their cooking and baking had to have been far superior with sublime cheeses and grapes.  Maybe they learned to twirl their hairy mustaches far ahead of the Spanish Neanderthals.  Or invented much nicer footwear.  I am sure they had the most fashionable and vogue capes to fight the cold vs. the burly animal skin worn by the Neanderthals of other countries.

The "shroom hypothesis has me wondering. I think the scientists are barking up the wrong tree, so to speak.   My image of the culturally advanced French Neanderthals, however, I think is a brilliant hypothesis.  Worthy of major scientific analysis for sure.