Bisson's recent work, drawing on both his students' queries and his own tool-making experience, has involved developing what he calls a "production grammar," describing what notions guided Neanderthals as they chipped flint into tools. "The cultural rules assumed by previous generations of archeologists such as Bordes just aren't operating," he points out. But how can one test what rules were in play? There being no stone-age subjects around to question, he sought the next best thing.

"University undergraduates are clearly not Neanderthals," Bisson writes in "Interview with a Neanderthal," recently published in the Cambridge Archeological Journal, "but under carefully controlled conditions, and in the absence of cultural constructs to structure their tool-making behaviour, they may perform some actions in the same way."

Bisson and a Neanderthal friend on location in Saskatchewan

He recruited a dozen undergraduate volunteers who had no previous coursework that would have exposed them to stone-age tool types, and, after a brief training session, set them to work, paleolithic-style. His findings supported his hypothesis: "Neanderthals are reacting to the mechanical properties of stone and the shape of the flint chip they are starting with," he asserts. "The only cognitive category that is in a Neanderthal's head is the edge of the piece. He might think, 'I want a certain edge,' because a steep edge planes more effectively, and a thin edge cuts more effectively. But that's it."

This latest article credits his hardworking "Neanderthal" undergrads, who seem to respond well to the demands placed upon them. Despite an arduous workload, his courses are popular and regularly receive solid evaluations. In return, he says, the students consistently impress him with their intelligence and ability. But no doubt part of his success is that he conveys his interest and enthusiasm the way others share flu viruses.

"I used to think lithic technology was dull," says Kovarovic, who did her honours thesis with Bisson as her supervisor. "But he reads tools as though they're books. You need a lot of imagination as an archeologist. You need to be able to tell stories about objects, about how they relate to people. He can pick up a scraper and turn it into a narrative on human evolution and behaviour."

Take, for instance, his rendition of the stone-age technology revolution. For several thousand years, around 45,000 to 50,000 years ago, Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans -- who looked pretty much like us today, but without the suits and cellphones -- lived together in Europe, after the latter emigrated from the warmer climes of Africa. But modern humans improved technology by sticking their stone tools onto wooden handles, as Bisson shows in another recent study analyzing artifacts from the Skhul cave in the Garrod collection. The innovation indicates a mental flexibility and an ability to experiment that seemed foreign to Neanderthals.

By 40,000 BC in Eurasia, when modern humans were developing more complex minds and mental processes, the Neanderthal population was dwindling to its final remnants in the mountains at the western tip of the Iberian peninsula. Relations between Neanderthals and their more modern counterparts are the subject of much discussion, and there are many hypotheses as to why they vanished. Bisson suggests they were probably simply displaced by their more cerebral kin; a warming climate may also have been a factor.

But each archeological find opens new possibilities. While Neanderthals and modern humans struggled for a place in the ecosystem, and may actually have fought one another, Bisson points out that "the evidence is mounting that they definitely made love." Recently in Lagar Vehlo, Portugal, the skeleton of a young boy with an anatomically modern head and a Neanderthal body was found. While there is debate over how to interpret the remains, the child could arguably have been a hybrid. And as the skeleton has been dated as being from about 25,000 BC, much later than the last Neanderthal, such offspring of Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans were clearly not sterile.

Thus, the difference between Neanderthals and those early folks who looked like us is likely not so very great. With discoveries like this, our human past -- that history of bone, brain and muscle -- becomes, slowly, a bit more tangible and a bit more personal.

Patrick McDonagh, former assistant editor of the McGill News, is a Montreal freelance writer.