Some 75,000 years ago, a man sat in the Shanidar caveAn archaeological site on Bradost Mountain in Iraq. Scientists investigating Neanderthal bones there were followed by a camera crew on a BBC and Netflix documentary, Secrets of the Neanderthals. in what is now northern IraqA country in the Middle East with a population of 43.5m. . He was blind in one eye, unable to use his right arm and missing a hand. Other people had to bring him food and help him to eat.

But this man was not a homo sapiensThe species to which all modern humans belong. Homo sapiens means "wise man" in Latin. like us. He was a NeanderthalAn extinct species of human that lived until 40,000 years ago. . And he is helping to change how we think about our long-dead cousins.

In the past, scientists made drawings and models of Neanderthals that look violent and dangerous.

But more recent discoveries have found they were creative, painting their cave walls just like we did. They may even have buried their dead like we do.

So when the scientists working at the Shanidar site tried to build the face of a Neanderthal woman, they gave her a kindly, gentle face.

But as other scientists point out, we do not know that this is realistic either! All we have of Neanderthals is their skeletons. We know nothing of how they really looked.

So reconstructing the Neanderthals like this is really a question of how we want to see them.

But then some think this is what we do all the time anyway. We interpretExplain or decide on the meaning of something. people's faces to fit our view of them.

The problem is that we can never be sure we are reading other people's faces correctly.

Do faces always lie?

Yes! There is no way of knowing what is behind another person's eyes. The human world can be a strange place, so we tell ourselves what we need to hear to feel safe.

No! Humanity's greatest gift is being able to communicateShare or exchange information and ideas. with each other. A huge part of this is reading other people's faces to tell if they are happy, sad or worried. And we are very good at it.