LOL. It may have been a joke but it was something that would have been considered seriously. I've been into Neanderthal society lately. The common theory at one time was that Neanderthals were forced into extinction by the more intelligent species of man.
More recent research has shown that Neanderthals had more intelligence than was previously thought. But more interesting is that there was interbreeding and Neanderthals may have been absorbed rather than driven to extinction.
We all have Neanderthal DNA and some of that DNA was quite helpful