Late Neanderthals 'like us'

The BBC has a science report asserting that the later Neanderthals were more gracile and structurally like modern men. It says a great deal about how little we know about them that a single find has people jumping to dramatic new conclusions: Interbreeding with modern humans or evolving in the same direction . . . The old rule of thumb says that if two critters have fertile offspring, they're the same species--which would mean that Neander and Sapiens (semi-sapiens?) were the same species. Without salvageable DNA, there's no way to test that hypothesis, though.

Evolving/breeding in the same direction . . . does that mean that the environment was less harsh, or that technology meant that you didn't need to be The Incredible Hulk to survive, and so might actually survive to adulthood? I wonder how much of the bone size difference is due to environment... The skulls are legitimately different and the baby Neanders are alleged to also have thicker bones than Sapiens, so obviously not all the difference is response to environmental stress. Someone claimed serious iodine deficiency might be responsible for making a Sapiens look Neader, but that doesn't match what little I've seen in the pictures of various deficiencies. But iodine deficiency in a Neander might look rather dramatic--and a number of the Neander sites are in areas without a lot of fish. Maybe the gracile Neander is normal and the Hulk isn't?

Theories are a dime a dozen when you don't have much data...