The ability of the investigator is completely proportional to the amount of training he or she has received from the crime laboratory. Given the variety of items that must be checked from a crime-scene (for example: Fingerprinting, Biology, Chemistry, Firearms and toolmark identification, etc), the training of the investigator is key to finding evidence and, eventually, solving the crime.
Homo erectus and Neanderthals lived at the same time as homo sapiens. Neanderthals eventually died off and homo erectus may have evolved into homo sapiens