Over the past 40 years, phones and computers have turned into the world’s largest library. Answers now arrive in seconds. With generative artificial intelligence, that speed has only increased. A question about ancient humans or heart rate changes can be answered instantly. What still lags behind is accuracy. That gap is the focus of new research led by Matthew Magnani, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Maine, and Jon Clindaniel, a professor of computational anthropology at the University of Chicago. Their study, published in the journal Advances in Archaeological Practice, asks a simple question with wide impact: when AI is asked to show daily life in the deep past, does it reflect modern science or outdated ideas? The researchers turned to Neanderthals as their test case. The species, known scientifically as Homo neanderthalensis, has been debated for more than a century. Early scientists pictured Neanderthals as hunched, primitive, and barely human. More recent work paints a different picture, showing cultural skill, social depth, and physical diversity. That long shift made Neanderthals an …