Were Neanderthals soulful inventors or strange cannibals?

The Naked Neanderthal Ludovic Slimak Allen Lane (2023)

Will we ever truly understand the Neanderthals? Archaeologist Ludovic Slimak paints a vivid picture in The Naked Neanderthal. Written like a philosophical travelogue, this intriguing book offers personal vignettes of archaeological excavations and provocative critiques of researchers’ tendencies to interpret Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) as the intellectual and creative cousins of Homo sapiens. Instead, the author argues, they are stranger to us than people might admit, with a culture that is both sophisticated and alien.

Neanderthals emerged between 400,000 and 350,000 years ago and roamed western Eurasia, before disappearing around 40,000 years ago. Rather than concentrating on the ice-age periods that tend to get popular attention, Slimak draws readers’ eyes to the Eemian interglacial — a warm phase of more than 10,000 years that began around 123,000 years ago, when much of the Neanderthals’ Eurasian territory was richly forested.

A rite of passage

Sites that date to the Eemian are relatively rare, but there are several in southern France. Slimak directs his attention there, describing two of his own cave excavations. First, he relates how Neanderthals hunting deer seemed to focus on male animals, based on the numbers and types of bones found at the site Le Grand Abri aux Puces. The author finds potential social meaning in the targeted hunting of males, suggesting it might reflect symbolic, ritual behaviour.

Next, he explores evidence from skeletal remains for butchery and cannibalism of the dead in Neanderthal communities at Moula Guercy. Some researchers have proposed that such findings are a sign of starvation — evidence that Neanderthals were not able to adapt to the warm Eemian forests. Slimak concludes instead that these behaviours were a natural part of hominin social interactions, citing growing evidence from both archaeology and primatology that such practices were relatively common among humans right through prehistory.

Next, the author ferrets out controversies around the Châtelperronian — a culture in France and northern Spain that dates to around 43,000–39,000 years ago. Archaeological evidence of this industry lies in sediment layers between those of the last confirmed Neanderthal cultures and those containing the first tools clearly recognized as having been made by H. sapiens.

The Châtelperronian is defined by stone blades and points made in a different way to those of Neanderthals, as well as by worked bones and pierced teeth that are similar to objects found in later H. sapiens contexts. It is famous, and controversial, because the sediment layers at two sites that contain these objects also seemed to include Neanderthal bones. For decades, archaeologists have debated whether Neanderthals invented these artefacts in parallel to H. sapiens, or whether they were inspired indirectly or through actual contact with humans. But the two sites were not excavated to modern standards, leading some archaeologists to question the discoveries. Slimak adds his voice to those proposing caution, because of evidence that the sediments were disturbed naturally, which might have led to deeper layers mingling with overlying Châtelperronian ones.

Given these circumstances, even Neanderthal bones and DNA no longer provide reliable evidence that these hominins were responsible for the Châtelperronian tools. Slimak’s conclusion that “there is nothing more fragile than a molecular analysis without a robust context” cannot be disputed. He reminds archaeologists that — even with sophisticated dating and genetic methods — confirming the integrity of excavated layers should be a foremost concern, as should finding undisturbed sites.

Exploring how Neanderthals died out, Slimak puts differences between analyses of ancient DNA and the archaeological record under the spotlight. Although palaeogenomic analysis clearly points to at least three or four phases of interbreeding between Neanderthals and H. sapiens, there is barely any archaeological evidence for those encounters. Slimak’s continuing work at the French Grotte Mandrin site might be an exception, thanks to a pioneering analysis of soot layers on the cave walls. This suggests that humans temporarily replaced local Neanderthals around 54,000 years ago over an extraordinarily short time — potentially less than one year. The author uses this to argue that extermination, rather than assimilation, is the most likely explanation for the Neanderthals’ eventual extinction.

Discerning a Neanderthal’s ‘soul’

Throughout his book, Slimak criticizes the potential gullibility of other researchers. For instance, in his view, modern archaeologists have over-interpreted evidence for ancient ‘artistic’ sensibility. Museum reconstructions that feature Neanderthals with painted skin or shell necklaces, portraying them like “a macabre puppet”, he writes, result in part from archaeologists’ inability to accept the “strangeness” of Neanderthals. He makes some valid points — pigments and shells can have practical, as well as aesthetic uses, for instance. Yet he is at odds with most in the field in being roundly dismissive of the idea that engraved bones, coloured fossil shells and even pigment mixes on eagle talons can tell us something about Neanderthals’ nascent aesthetic capacity and, in his words, their “soul”.

Common to all the author’s critiques is a singular idea of how researchers should do archaeology, in both a physical and philosophical sense. For Slimak, doing decades of fieldwork is essential before contributing to the knowledge and discourse on Neanderthals: “to imagine you have anything pertinent to say … when your only encounter is through boxes in museums is nonsense”. Many in the discipline will bristle at this and at the fact that, despite occasional assertions that he, too, struggles to understand Neanderthals, Slimak regards himself as possessing an “unprejudiced” perspective that makes him exceptionally well suited to discern their true nature.

But Slimak is not unbiased. He is even-handed when examining how Neanderthal interactions with the dead intersect with primatology but, when considering aesthetics, unfairly dismisses chimpanzee paintings as meaningless doodles, when they, too, have relevance to hominin evolution. Critical perception is also strangely lacking in his idea that the presence of male deer bones at Le Grand Abri aux Puces are from a “virile hunt” — a masculine Neanderthal rite of passage — without evidence beyond that of recent hunter-gatherer cultures. In places, nuance is also missing. Many archaeologists might dispute his claims that Neanderthal stone-tool technology was devoid of any form of standardization, for instance.

And, as always, when dealing with fast-moving science, some things are already out of date. For example, Slimak refers to the 45,000-year-old Ust’-Ishim man from Siberia as the oldest known H. sapiens DNA, but genomes that are several centuries older have been found in Bulgaria (H. Fewlass et al. Nature Ecol. Evol. 4, 794–801; 2020) and the Czech Republic (K. Prüfer et al. Nature Ecol. Evol. 5, 820–825; 2021). Still, there’s a wealth of useful, up-to-date information and debate in the book for both archaeologists and general readers.

The Naked Neanderthal is absorbing, elegantly written and sometimes mischievously humorous, yet in places also frustratingly unbalanced. Its depiction of the community that studies Neanderthals as dominated by competing sides with inflexible, ideological agendas is not a fair portrait. But Slimak’s way of highlighting the uncertainty is refreshing. To have your ideas and views challenged is a healthy thing, and the willingness to say “I’m not sure” or, even, “we cannot know” is not common enough in popular science books.