Neanderthal lives were not easy, and, given the levels of physical exertion they seem to have experienced habitually, bringing them often into contact with physical trauma, it would not be surprising if such phenomena played a major role in the way in which Neanderthals perceived the world. This is the underlying theme of this paper, which is organized into two parts. After presenting data on Neanderthal ontogeny and lifecycles, an attempt is made to integrate these broadly with the archaeological record and intepret both in terms of the constitution of society by Neanderthal individuals. In this sense it is in the main a purely interpretative work, representing the author's reading of the biometric and archaeological data. Given that linguistic and/or external means of information storage and communication were probably poor or absent in Neanderthal society, it is suggested that the phases of the Neanderthal lifecycle and events of physical trauma experienced ubiquitously within it played the major role in the negotiation of individual identities within Neanderthal bands, and ultimately were a major factor in the constitution of Neanderthal society.