I just watched a video which re-examined our view of Neanderthals. You may remember the model of a sympathetic-looking Neanderthal with the smile of reason on display at the NY Museum of Natural History. It has become the modern go-to image of a Neanderthal, showing them as our peaceful, gentle cousins. The sub-text is, of course, how we warlike modern humans unjustly wiped them out. It turns out that an examination of their bones revealed that Neanderthals were swimming in steroids and testosterone, making our species girly men by comparison. They were extradonarilly heavily muscled, like gorillas, with their lower bodies adapted for sprinting with quick, violent attacks, and their bones typically displayed signs of multiple fractures and traumatic injury, brought about by close combat with large game. The bones also showed that they ate almost only meat, including possibly us.
All this paints a picture of a violent, aggressive, thuggish species, and one quite far from that museum display.