THE LAST NEANDERTHAL

A French paleoanthropologist muses over the extinction of a species.

Working in western France, Slimak, author of The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature, discovered that a group of Homo sapiens had taken up residence in a Neanderthal cave 54,000 years ago and remained for 40 years. Neanderthals themselves did not vanish for another 12,000 years, according to the latest evidence. Also present were innumerable sapiens’ flint points, similar to those thousands of miles to the east, revealing that early sapiens already followed ancient, widespread cultural traditions. The points could only have been useful in arrows, so archery was found in sites 40,000 years older than its supposed invention. On the site are remains of an ancient Neanderthal, whom the author and his team name Thorin (after “one of the last dwarf kings under the mountain” in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit). A few scattered teeth and bone fragments provide the first evidence of contact between sapiens and Neanderthals—so precious that his team spends seven years employing only tweezers to precisely tease out each particle and preserve its context. By the book’s midpoint, it becomes clear that the site illustrates contacts between sapiens and Neanderthals before they went their separate ways. This makes it a major finding. The author concludes that three waves of sapiens arrived in Europe over 12,000 years, which contradicts previous descriptions, and he elaborates on his hypothesis in details that will flummox readers not familiar with academic anthropological scholarship. The book’s second half defends his findings but emphasizes that no natural law governs the behavior of human societies, and thinkers who disagreed (Marx, Rousseau) are mostly known for being wrong. Readers searching for the details of human evolution should consult Ian Tattersall or Yuval Noah Harari. Slimak describes important findings, but his focus on their implications owes perhaps too much to his nation’s literary deconstructionists.

Archeological theory for Francophiles.