> the Belgian individuals seemed to have dramatically different diets than their Spanish contemporaries

> The Belgian individuals ... woolly rhinoceros, sheep and edible mushrooms

> the Spanish Neanderthals ... didn't seem to be eating any meat. Their teeth instead bore traces of mushrooms, pine nuts and forest mos

Regarding the mushrooms both were found to have been eating, I am reminded of Terence McKenna's "stoned ape" theory http://www.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/McKenna/Evolution/theory.htm...

> there is a growing body of evidence that they were far more advanced than modern humans give them credit for. Recent studies revealed that they wore jewelry, created art and architecture, made complex tools and developed sophisticated big-game hunting strategies. All this suggests that they were capable of symbolic thought and social coordination, intellectual abilities that were once considered exclusively human

Any chance of recreating Neanderthals from DNA a la Jurassic Park? We could find out how advanced they were - the only species comparable to humans as of yet.

Not only they are humans (homo neanderthalensis vs homo sapiens, but both homo) but there are traces of Neanderthal DNA in modern humans, since there was interbreading among them. So, no wonder they are comparable to us, since they are not that much different than us on evolutionary timescale.

> Today, all humans except people from Africa carry a small fraction of Neanderthal DNA in their genes.

> “They haven't gone extinct, really,” Dobney said. “They’re still alive in us.”

But I couldn't find out how much "neanderthal" we are.

Can't revive their culture and customs (burials and other rites) from DNA alone though. Language? Maybe it could answer definitely how language capable they were though.

Any source of the actual article?

The Guardian article¹ links to Nature².

1: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/mar/08/neanderthal-... 2:http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nature21674

How can a microbe express surprise?

The microbes are not expressing surprise (the emotion) but revealing surprises (surprise-inducing noun plural).

yes, that's the joke.