'It haunts all our imaginations': Were Neanderthals really like us?
In this excerpt from "The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature" (Pegasus Books, 2023), by Ludovic Slimak, the author examines how we view our ancient extinct relative, the Neanderthal — and whether considering the species in terms of our understanding of humanity is a case of pathetic fallacy. A hidden but nonetheless fierce war is being waged in the research community. On one side, those who think the Neanderthal is another us. On the other, those who think it is an archaic form of humanity, with vastly inferior intellectual capabilities. A subhuman, a quasi-human, or any other adverb that we can place before or after "human" that is generally u NFL attering, except in a Marvel comic. It is not so much a war of ideas as a war of ideologies, in which neither camp can advance without getting more and more bogged down in the mud — and I am not talking about the mud of the caves, unfortunately. So, was the Neanderthal a human somewhere bet...