Joseph Layden, Author of The Unnamed Bears Favor
Some did live in caves but they lived outside in lodgings like homo sapiens as well. The Neanderthals seem to have been able to withstand extreme temperatures in Siberia without much clothes or fire. They are only thought to have worn shawls and are not known for sewing needles like the Late Paleolithic homo sapiens and Denisovans. However, they did make fire via chemistry by mixing several different substances together. It most mostly used for making glues and tars that scientists still find difficult to create today.
Some groups of people living today can withstand extreme temperatures. Australian Aborigines can sleep in drifts of snow with only a thin blanket. Peruvian Native Americans swim naked in freezing waters.
Neanderthals likely had extreme control over their body regulation, as evidenced by their tolerance for pain , evidenced in the study of their fossil injuries and how they healed.
They may also have been hairy or even furry. Though the genes for dark skin give us a date of 1.2 million years for hominins first losing their “fur,” the genetic sweep seems to have happened only in the Southern Hemisphere. In the Northern Hemisphere, genes for thick fur may have remained under positive selection until recent times . Even bare skinned Heidelberg moved north, absorbing their hairy cousins (Homo Antessessor), they would have found some Antessessor genes useful in the environment they’d evolved in.
Though it may seem counterintuitive, this could explain why a particular Neanderthal gene for hairlessness is found in many Asians, but in few Neanderthals themselves. Positive selection of hairlessness among the line leading to modern homo sapiens can also be seen as discrimination against “furry people.” Most of the archaic traits that survived were the ones that aren’t so superficially obvious.
More on this here:
How did Neanderthals stay warm in caves without dying of smoke inhalation? Did they not live in caves as we perceive they had?
