Letter: Neanderthals rule

Sir: It was interesting to see your report 'Patten calls education protesters neanderthal' (28 January) beside a computer advertisement that used a dinosaur as an example of flawed and outmoded design.

Do we, nowadays, regard anything that is old as somehow inferior, whatever the evidence? It has always been known that Neanderthals had bigger brains than we have, and now there is evidence for a complex culture based on articulate speech. As for the dinosaurs, 160 million years as the most significant creatures on Earth is hardly a record of failure. We might expect advertising agencies representing computer firms to know nothing - but Secretaries of State for Education . . ?

Yours faithfully,

DOUGAL DIXON

Wareham, Dorset