Hi, Dave.
Actually, science didn't determine anything of the kind.
PEOPLE made that determination, using something OTHER than 'science.'
There are varying forms of 'science.' There is pseudo science, and downright JUNK science, like we can see in ads purporting perpetual motion machines and generators, allegedly 'creating' free energy for homes.
Science says nothing, Dave.
PEOPLE say things.
People are fallible, as you know, and so keeping that in mind, and looking at the fact that those same PEOPLE collected a few scant bone fragments, pieced them together into a skulls, which are mostly shaped from their assumptions of ape origins, and formulating half human, half ape, skulls as their contrived "missing link" nonsense...no, Dave. It's all a bunch of hooey. Neanderthals were fully human, and there are no missing links. If there were, then the fossil record should be replete with evidence of such. The lack of them having found even one 'missing link' without having to fabricate a few from their own imaginations from a scant quantity of fragments, that is not science.
MM