Subscribe now for full access and no adverts
REVIEW BY MATTHEW POPE
From the start, Slimak is clear that The Naked Neanderthal is a very personal book and offers his own individual views on the archaeology of Neanderthal people. And this is an important point to make. The book is not written with the voice of distant science journalism, nor one of optimistic wonder, nor does it attempt to speak for the discipline as a whole. Rather, Slimak presents us with a view of this now extinct human population that he feels we urgently need to hear.
Slimak lays out his credentials early. A large part of the book is very much a mid-life memoir of more than 30 years of field experience, from the French heartlands of the Palaeolithic discipline to the far north of Siberia. He shares with us some of the hard realities of excavating the remains of distant lives from the caves, crevices, and permafrost landscapes that preserve the Palaeolithic record.
Through more recent excavations and scientific publications, Slimak and his colleagues have already presented the world with a new view of early prehistory in Western Europe. This is one in which multiple waves of Homo sapiens disperse over millennia into Western Europe, bringing with them new technologies. This view sees Homo neanderthalensis and their cultures only replaced by Homo sapiens after a process lasting millennia. This theory, recently echoed in the results of excavations from Castle Ranis in Germany is also significant in distancing Neanderthal populations from the appearance of innovative Upper Palaeolithic technologies in Europe. In this book, Slimak takes his cue from this change in perspective to focus on telling us what separates these two populations, perhaps as a reaction to his perception that for too many years we have focused too much on what unites them.
It is perhaps in the context of reframing Neanderthal research in Western Europe that The Naked Neanderthal finds its niche on the human origins bookshelf. From the start, Slimak contends that we have been sold, in recent decades, a disingenuous view of Neanderthal people. He asks us to look critically at the genetic evidence, and consider what do those small percentages of Neanderthal DNA so many of us carry really mean. He asks us to weigh that small inheritance against the disappearance of entire populations and cultures 40 millennia ago. Slimak calls for us to look critically at the evidence for Neanderthal art, for body adornment, for cultural and technological traits of the Upper Palaeolithic, and to weigh that against the bulk of the considerable record of Neanderthal archaeology that sits within certain, apparently immutable, parameters.
Sometimes this call is a little ambiguous, at more than one point referring to Neanderthal people as creatures, often trying to invoke distance, but at others firmly embracing their humanity. At length, he asks us to consider evidence for cannibalism in Neanderthal populations within a modern ethnographic framework of ritual and rites of passage, but also to consider the differences between evidence for symbolic expression in both populations. Ambiguity is not a problem as far as I’m concerned, but here it sometimes sits uneasily alongside the authoritative certainty in the voice of the author.
As a book that provokes thought, and maybe brings the reader closer to a personal view of the record, this was an interesting read. As a book that doesn’t claim to speak for the discipline, it is authentic. It did, however, make me yearn for a book that sought to get closer to the multiple, diverse voices engaged in research and their own connection with their practice, with the record, and with the people.
The Naked Neanderthal, with its conscious echo of the book by Desmond Morris, certainly cannot speak for the discipline and does not claim to. What we have laid bare here is one man’s experience, one man’s view of the deep past and his warning that we may have been sold a Neanderthal of our times, pushing the limits of the evidence. For the interested reader, this provides an engaging and thoughtful perspective from an experienced prehistorian, and will hopefully encourage them to seek out other perspectives too.
The Naked Neanderthal
Ludovic Slimak
Penguin, £10.99
ISBN 978-1802061819
