The Naked Neanderthal

A New Understanding of the Human Creature

By: Ludovic Slimak

Narrated by: John Sackville

What do we really know about our cousins, the Neanderthals? For over a century we saw Neanderthals as inferior to Homo Sapiens. More recently, the pendulum swung the other way and they are generally seen as our relatives: not quite human, but similar enough, and still not equal. Now, thanks to an ongoing revolution in paleoanthropology in which he has played a key part, Ludovic Slimak shows us that they are something altogether different-and they should be understood on their own terms rather than by comparing them to ourselves. As he reveals in this stunning book, the Neanderthals had their own history, their own rituals, their own customs. Their own intelligence, very different from ours.

Slimak has travelled around the world for the past thirty years to uncover who the Neanderthals really were. A modern-day Indiana Jones, he takes us on a fascinating archaeological investigation: from the Arctic Circle to the deep Mediterranean forests, he traces the steps of these enigmatic creatures, working to decipher their real stories through every single detail they left behind.

A thought-provoking adventure story, The Naked Neanderthal shifts our understanding of deep history-and in the process reveals just how much we have yet to learn.

©2024 Ludovic Slimak (P)2024 Tantor

A lifetime of research, followed by hard truth.

Honesty of perspectives had me check my own excitement in assumptions. Refusal to project a cartoonish imagery makes sense of stereotypes we muddy our past through. Rewriting history through perceptions of how we wish to see it rather than understanding the infinite criteria behind limited fact or data found, is left for a story to be mystified into some legends. Reality is endless in imagination. Inch by inch, we'll read in a clear explanation, as the author walks the reader along his lifetime of experience looking for the this missing humanity that once walked the earth. Without exaggeration, he helps the reader to stay grounded and become self-aware through this presentation. Finding clues, has been a much broader battle of misunderstanding of our own misperceptions of the Neanderthal. A liberating read that helps to shine the light on subject itself, as well as on the participation of any individual who finds such interests.

Controversial

The author asserts that essentially Homo sapiens did to Neanderthals what Europeans did to the American Indians. He certainly has a solid background in Neanderthals & paleontology. Controversial and in my eyes almost opposed to those works which emphasize a more “ sapien” view of Neanderthals and a less violent replacement of them