How did the Spy Cave discoveries in Belgium change views of Neanderthals?

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Neanderthal Artist's rendering of Homo neanderthalensis, who ranged from western Europe to Central Asia for some 100,000 years before dying out approximately 30,000 years ago.

The 1886 discovery of two fossil skeletons at Spy, Belgium, was a pivotal moment in the study of Neanderthals. Prior to this find, some anatomists argued that the unusual morphology of the original 1856 Feldhofer Cave fossils was not evidence of a distinct human species, but rather the result of pathology in modern humans.

Because the Spy Cave remains closely resembled the Feldhofer specimens, they provided critical corroborating evidence that these physical traits were characteristic of a population rather than individual deformities. Consequently, the pathology explanation was abandoned, helping to establish the Neanderthals as a distinct group of archaic humans rather than diseased modern individuals.1