The Naked Neanderthal

The Naked Neanderthal by Ludovic Slimak

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In this book, paleoanthropologist Ludovic Slimak promises to show that Neanderthals were a distinctly different kind of humanity than homo sapiens. Slimak notes that the two species are separated by at least a half million years of divergent evolution and that it would stand to reason that they were different creatures with substantially different perspectives on reality.

Given the popular depiction of neanderthals in the modern popular media, this approach is revisionist. Neanderthals are now presented as something almost identical to sapien humanity, as if mentioning differences would be racist. Neanderthal physical differences is downplayed such that Neanderthals could pass for sapien in an urban setting. Even the Neanderthal extinction is treated almost as if the neanderthals didn't go extinct; they just married into the sapien family.

By the end of this book, Slimak sorts this out in a tour de force, but it is slow getting there. By about 70% of the book, I was not sure that Slimak was going to offer anything but the conventional tropes.

In the first 705 of the book, we learn that that there may have been a Neanderthal community in the Siberian polar regions that lasted until 28,000 years ago, approximately 14,000 years after Neanderthals disappeared from Europe. This is interesting but not revolutionary. We also learn that Neanderthals probably were not cannibals, at least not because of environmental stress. Again, this seems to be part of the trope that Neanderthal was just like us.

But 70% of the way into the book, Slimak kicks into high gear.

First, he debunks Neanderthal art. Slimak points out that scientists have not discovered the first hole in any object that might have been used to string together shells, beads, or other adornments. We have examples of these kinds of things in sapien archeological sites, but not Neanderthal. The reports of shells with holes in them are artifacts created by crabs.

Likewise, while we can find figurines and undisputed artwork among sapien sites, we have not found anything similar at Neanderthal sites.

Similarly, much has been made about bird feathers being found at Neanderthal sites, but remains of bird feathers have been found at more primitive hominid locations. Further, it turns out that the attachment points of bird feathers have been known by Innuits to contain locations of fats that are easily sucked out for nutrition.

So, there are either no indications of Neanderthal art or not enough to matter. In comparison with Sapiens, this is a substantial difference.

More significant and surprising for me was weaponry. Neanderthal stone crafting techniques had “remarkably few weapons” in their inventory, i.e. tools that were designed solely for killing game. Slimak notes:

We can pose this hypothesis because it seems that the Neanderthals had remarkably few weapons. Take any series of tens of thousands of flint objects from any Neanderthal collection and you will find only the very occasional weapon. I would even go so far as to say that you will find them only if you really look hard for them. As objects they are consistently heavy, oddly shaped and often lacking in any technical refinement. At best, assuming they are indeed weapons, we are talking about ends of lances that would be used for stabbing rather than throwing. This has been discussed in a number of recent studies, which have come to somewhat binary conclusions. The frantic quest for Neanderthal weapons is rather like the quest for Neanderthal art: a tenuous project, as we discussed earlier.

Slimak, Ludovic. The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature (p. 174). Pegasus Books. Kindle Edition.

And:
direction. Despite a systematic search for weapons in some very well-endowed archaeological ensembles, the fact that such objects are so rare suggests that weapon production was a very marginal activity for the Neanderthals. The question of Neanderthal weapons remains little understood to this day. The picture we get is one of rudimentary technologies based on the production of massive lances or javelins that required a close contact with the game being hunted. The hunt would have been carried out using a lance and would have involved the hunters approaching their prey and taking them on at close quarters. In Mandrin as elsewhere, when we discover arms in the Neanderthal layers, they are always massive objects and would have been used as pole weapons.

Slimak, Ludovic. The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature (pp. 174-175). Pegasus Books. Kindle Edition.

In contrast:

When we look for sapiens arms, just a cursory glance at any collection will reveal a large number of objects that could potentially be used for hunting purposes. In Neanderthal collections, you need to dissect huge corpora of flint pieces to uncover the odd vaguely diagnostic trace of weapon use. The rarity of arms in the Neanderthal archive is striking.

Slimak, Ludovic. The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature (p. 175). Pegasus Books. Kindle Edition.

There is also the question of technique. Each Neanderthal tool is a creation in itself. Each tool is “de factor a unique object.” Slimak attributes this to the “artisanal freedom” and “very rich freedom of thought about the world” that Neanderthals enjoyed.

In contrast, Sapiens are in the grip of efficiency and routine. Sapien craftsmen would turn out scores of identical products of the same type for specific single uses, where a Neanderthal might turn out a single multi-purpose tool for multiple uses.

There is also the fact that Neanderthal technology did not change for hundreds of thousands of years. In contrast, Sapien technology was leaping forward. Sapiens were inventing projectile weapons – bows and javelins. There was a world of difference between the Neanderthal approach which involved coming into close contact with prey and running it through with physical strength versus standing off at a distance and plinking the prey with projectiles. If there was to be conflict, then the latter strategy was going to make the difference.

And it may have come down to that. Slimak shares the fascinating discovery at Mandrin cave where a Mousterian point was found in proximity to a small white blade that was the work of a modern human. By analyzing the chemical traits of soot on the walls of the cave, scientists were able to date Neanderthal occupancy of the cave to within a yar of Sapient occupancy. Slimak explains:

This high-resolution detective work produced an unexpected discovery: analysis of the films of soot revealed that the two humanities inhabited this cave no more than a year apart. A maximum of a year. That meant that, for the first time in Europe, we had evidence pointing to a physical encounter between them in a well-defined territory. The two humanities must have physically met right here. We are unable as yet to achieve a resolution greater than a year, but we have shown for the first time that the two human groups were effectively contemporaries in a very precise territory, whether their encounter took place in the wider territory, the mid Rhône valley, or in this very cave itself. As the Mandrin cave had been continually used for nearly 80,000 years by Neanderthal populations, the fact that the moment of this meeting also marks the end of Neanderthal societies everywhere in Europe can hardly be put down to an unfortunate coincidence. Not only do we find no more traces of Neanderthal cultures after the exact moment of the encounter, but it seems these populations ceased to exist, biologically speaking, outside of a few peripheral areas of the continent, which takes us back to the possible polar zones of refuge that we discussed earlier.

Slimak, Ludovic. The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature (p. 161). Pegasus Books. Kindle Edition.

So, Mandrin cave shows (a) 80,000 years of Neanderthal occupation, (b) a point of contact within a year of Sapient and Neanderthal occupancy, and (c) complete replacement of the Neandertal population by Homo Sapiens from that point on.

This is the story of Sapient/Neanderthal interaction. Wherever Homo Sapien showed up, Neanderthals disappeared, and they disappeared quickly. This is the time to consider those bow and arrows and something that looks like Westerners with a technological edge overcoming the American Indians within decades.

Again, when Sapiens made an appearance, Neanderthal disappeared from the archaeological record. So the implication is that the Neanderthals did not die a beautiful death.

Slimak, Ludovic. The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature (p. 167). Pegasus Books. Kindle Edition.

At this point, it seems that there was something substantially different between Sapiens and Neanderthals. The difference may have been genetic:

In April 2021, Nature: Molecular Psychiatry published a study that aimed to decipher the emergence of human creativity by focusing on three main aspects of personality: emotional reactivity, self-control and self-consciousness. It revealed the existence of genetic structures in Neanderthals similar to those identified in chimpanzees when it came to emotional reactivity, and a position halfway between chimpanzees and modern humans when it came to self-control and self-consciousness, which directly impacted on their creative potential, their consciousness of self and their prosocial behaviour.

Slimak, Ludovic. The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature (p. 157). Pegasus Books. Kindle Edition.

In addition, that trope about not recognizing a Neanderthal in modern clothes is nonsense:

You've probably heard it said that you wouldn't recognize a Neanderthal if you met one on the subway? Well, it's not true.

Slimak, Ludovic. The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature (p. 148). Pegasus Books. Kindle Edition.

Things like eye sockets, receding forehad, occipital bun, would give the game away.

Of course, it is well-established that Neanderthal genes are found in surviving human populations. The anti-racist, “can't we all be friends” tropes argue that this points to a beautiful homogenizing of populations.

But wait a second. While Neanderthal genes are found in human populations, human genes are not found in Neanderthal samples.

We know from the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss in 1949 on the elementary structures of kinship that the exchange of women is a fundamental, invariant feature of the organization of every human society. By way of alliance between two human groups women are systematically integrated into the group of men. Genetics suggests that this ‘patrilocality' was already practised by Neanderthals. But this exchange of women, which ensures the biological survival of the population, is based on reciprocity: ‘I give you my sister, you give me your sister.' Aside from ensuring the simple genetic survival of the two groups, this act creates or enables an alliance between the two peoples. The absence of signs of sapiens interbreeding in the last Neanderthals and, conversely, their widespread presence among the first Sapiens in Europe could then represent a fundamental indicator as to the nature of the relationships between these populations, whether they took place in Europe or in Asia.

Palaeogenetics, then, reveals an unexpected non-reciprocity which might be summed up as follows: ‘I take your sister but I don't give you mine.' This lack of reciprocity in one of the fundamental structures of the relations between populations is disturbing. In ethnography the exchange of genes is not about love but is rather foundational and characteristic of the structure of alliances between human societies.

Slimak, Ludovic. The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature (p. 165). Pegasus Books. Kindle Edition.

In addition, the Neanderthal genes come from a period much earlier than the end:

Genetics in fact has told us nothing about the fate of the last Neanderthals, since the small percentages that survive in current populations seem to derive from much earlier interbreeding, perhaps around the 100th millennium, somewhere in Asia.

Slimak, Ludovic. The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature (p. 163). Pegasus Books. Kindle Edition.

At this point, Slimak has met his claim. Neanderthals were alien to human beings. They didn't change their tools. They didn't produce weapons. They didn't innovate. They didn't create forms. They didn't create art. Perhaps their tools were their art, with each one being a unique creation, but whatever they were they were not going to hold their own against Sapiens and the ability to turn out efficient weapon forms using the most modern technology.