The Last Neanderthal
Understanding How Humans Die
1. Auflage Oktober 2025
210 Seiten, Hardcover
Wiley & Sons Ltd
It's August 2015. After twenty-five years of archaeological research in a secluded cave overlooking the Rhône Valley in southern France, Ludovic Slimak uncovers the remains of a Neanderthal, frozen in time - a discovery that casts fresh light on a critical turning point in human history. Could these remains belong to one of the last Neanderthals? As scientists from around the world analyze the site, their findings disrupt everything we thought we knew about the final days of these ancient humans. This discovery takes us to the defining threshold when multiple human species, once coexisting in the same world, are wiped from history--leaving Homo sapiens as the sole human survivor.
Slimak takes the reader on an extraordinary journey of discovery that is both scientific and profoundly human, blending rigorous research with evocative storytelling. This breathtaking exploration of the past not only unearths the lost world of the Neanderthals but forces us to confront the unspoken question: is this how humanity dies?
A compelling narrative spanning millennia, The Last Neanderthal is both a groundbreaking scientific revelation and a profound reflection on the fragility of humanity and the threads that connect us to the distant past.
Chapter I - Unexpected complications on the way to the unthought
Boldly risking a step into the unknown
Another place, another time?
French poems...
Wandering through the naves of our thermonuclear cathedrals
Nanotechnologies of the first humans
From impressionistic dots to thick lines
A thousand millennia of Anatolian transgressions
Mythologies of the first modern humans
Human beings known as shadows
A first contact with inverted values
Making the best of a bad job
Chapter II - The last Neanderthal? An improbable encounter
The last Neanderthal!
The imaginary realms lying between two worlds
Upside down... Thorin is one hundred and five millennia old!
From rivers that unite to rivers that separate
Light beyond the unknown lands
A last Neanderthal, in his place? Touching the unquantifiable
From flesh to bone
The mind in matter and the gaze versus reality
Mental processes on the edge of the hole
For a few centimetres too many
The first of the last contacts?
Three waves breaking against the intellectual Titanic
Genetic surprises
The stone ship
Gone with the Wind
The oases of the sea
A simplified world
Chapter III - How do humans die?
A grammar between two worlds
Apology for the stifled
No one escapes the sphere
Men from the sky and white opossums
The gods must be crazy
Acculturation and the implosions of the spheres
Men in the trees
The gods must be crazy 2.0
In our disordered memories
The times of extinction
Epilogue. This is how humans die
Acknowledgements
