Holy shit, it’s the Feral Kid from Road Warrior!
Been meaning to reply to this but got side-tracked. Anyway, IIRC even neanderthals and other pre-historic humans made an effort to cover up body odor. Even if they didn’t, a neanderthal would have an odor which could be detected from a greater distance than a human. This means that if humans were planning on ambushing the neanderthals, they’d be able to sniff them out from a greater distance than the neanderthals could the humans.
If the neanderthals did try to mask their b.o., it’d take more flowers or whatever they might use, and they’d have to spend more of their time and energy gathering up such things, thus diverting them from mating and food gathering.
(With apologies to Jet Jaguar for continuing to use the inaccurate “humans vs neanderthals” terminology.)