The Naked Neanderthal
Homo neanderthalensis , or Neanderthals, were a species of hominin that existed from approximately 400,000 to 40,000 BCE, coexisting with Homo sapiens for up to 10,000 years. From the time of the discovery of their existence in 1856, they were assumed to be brutish, ignorant and animal-like. The stereotypical caveman. But new discoveries and evidence during the last decade have given us a different picture of what Neanderthals were like and what they were capable of.* These assumptions were that they were not so different from us. They were intelligent, excellent hunters and stone carvers, they created art and buried their dead, and they lived in small family groups, caring for each other. Now Ludovic Slimak, in The Naked Neanderthal , 2022 (English translation 2023), questions this more recent image. His perspective is that Neanderthals were not like us, but rather a completely different type of humanity, and that we cannot know what they were really like. He states that the...