The Naked Neanderthal

“Slimak dissolves many improvised notions. The naked Neanderthal refuses to be defined, maintaining a different humanity that allows us to question our own.”

 

"The book is filled with evocative imagery [that] leaves a lasting impression on the reader and provides compelling details of discovery and exploration."

 

“The quest for non-human intelligence has captivated the popular imagination lately, from charismatic cephalopods playing peekaboo on the seafloor to AI chatbots that long for love and revenge. Now the search for other minds is turning to the deep time of the human past, when Homo sapiens was not the only intelligent hominid stalking the landscape. So what do we know? Slimak makes two claims based on his own fieldwork, and this is where The Naked Neanderthal takes flight.”

 

"From creating cave art to burying their dead, how we see Neanderthals reveals as much about us as it does about them, argues Ludovic Slimak in a fascinating new book. We may have our closest extinct relatives all wrong - again"

"Slimak’s central argument, a synthesis of decades of his own and others’ research, is that Neanderthals possessed a distinctive form of intelligence in some ways superior to that of Homo sapiens. Clear explications of scientific concepts, lively commentary on the implications of competing ideas, and engaging storytelling describing the pursuit of knowledge by dedicated investigators bring a startling picture of an alternate humanity into view. We gain a clear and memorable sense, for instance, of the creative orientation and aesthetic sensibility suggested by Neanderthals’ craftsmanship, the role cannibalism might have played in their societies, the relationship between their hunting preferences and presumed social values, and the most plausible reasons behind their ultimate extinction. An exhilarating contemplation of human otherness."

"Who were the Neanderthals, and what do we really know about their artefacts and tools, customs and culture? An eye-opening and refreshing account, full of surprising revelations and personal reflections from a researcher who has spent thirty years coming face-to-face with another human species."

"This book is not merely a history of Neanderthals; it is also a history of the field of archeology. Slimak draws readers in with a journey mirroring the excitement, frustration, titillation, and doubt that characterizes study of the deep past, and he leaves them with food for thought about where we come from, who we are, and who we want to be."

 

"Ludovic Slimak provides a remarkable and well-informed account of the many facets of the lost Neanderthals. It shows us what it means to be human and allows us to better imagine what extraterrestrials might be like."

"A thrilling, bracing and scholarly introduction to modes of being and of paying attention to the world which are both akin to ours and importantly and revealingly different. We need urgently to consider less dysfunctional ways of occupying the cosmos and our own heads. The Neanderthals, speaking movingly and iconoclastically through Slimak, might be able to help."

"A fascinating, immensely enjoyable read by a brilliant and original thinker who has dedicated his working life to studying Neanderthals."

"With the style of a poet and imagination of a philosopher, Ludovic Slimak probes the minds of Neanderthals, our closest cousins. All too often Neanderthals are envisioned as either prehistoric brutes or full humans, but Slimak argues that they were something unique, a species that developed their own forms of consciousness and intelligence. In an age of artificial intelligence, this fun and provocative book is a reminder that we still have a lot to learn about biological intelligence."