Who was REALLY Neanderthal?

Audio 48:30

Naked Neanderthal by Ludovic Slimak.

© Editions Odile Jacob

By: Chantal Lorho Follow

1 min

Who was really Neanderthal?

A thick brute as we have long depicted him, a distant cousin adorned with necklaces of shells and feathers as we have imagined him more recently?

Or a being endowed with astonishing creativity whose mystery of disappearance 42,000 years ago has still not been solved?

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How long did Neanderthal rub shoulders with Homo Sapiens before it replaced him?

After 30 years of travels, meetings, excavations around the world, from the Arctic Circle to Mongolia, from the Sahel to Anatolia via the Rhone Valley in France, our guest sweeps away the clichés and wonders: why are we unable to conceive of a humanity other than our own?

With 

Ludovic Slimak

, CNRS researcher, specialist in Neanderthal societies for his book

Néandertal Nu

published by Odile Jacob.

He has just discovered that

Homo Sapiens was present in Europe earlier than previously thought

.

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176,500 years ago, Neanderthals were already exploring caves