the mystery of the death of the last Neanderthal

Since the beginning of the aviation career, or whatever before, since the modernization of astronomy began to map the vastness of space, the human being has been obsessed with the question: Are we alone in space? In this multitude of stars, satellites and planets, has biology really found an alternative path to the one it developed on Earth?

However, the question for men is not the existence of other night owls who simply feed and reproduce. What is planted on the outside has no one else who understands like him, who understands and believes like him. Someone can communicate with someone from you to you. As for, in the background, “Do you have anyone else?“Which one fears no one will react to, but actually hates it more than anyone else.”

But it may be that the interviewer is no more than a reflection of the species original pecado: he was the person responsible for the exterminio of another human species that was also able to reason and understand the world. And it lies in the fact that in the distant times of the Paleolithic there was an alternative humanity to that which shaped it. Homo sapiens: Neanderthal with this shared lineage (which probably branched into the highlands Homo heidelbergensis) and which disappeared between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago.

French archaeologist and paleoanthropologist Ludovic Slimák (France, 1973) dedicated his life to study Homo neanderthalensis. Between mining and mining, he occasionally devotes much of his time to disseminating small snippets of the immense knowledge that is felt in the mines.

I arrived in our country in 2024 Naked Neanderthal (Discourse) in which I found certain prejudices about these people. Ahora, p The Last Neanderthal (Debate, 2026), focuses on the end of this species, reveals new certain myths and succeeds in elucidating conclusions that we can connect with – in most cases – the information available to us.

Slimak’s starting point is the discovery of Neanderthal remains in 2015 in the world Cueva de Mandrinin the Rhone Valley, France. An idea that, over the course of several years, has seen not only the concepts of the paleoanthropologist himself, but also all the knowledge that has been accumulated with regard to the case of this species.

The Neandertal of the Mandrin cave was created by Slimak as Thorinin honor of the young king from JRR Tolkien’s saga Lord of the Rings. One of the last breeds slowly striving for extinction.

Slimak and his team are finished with part of the jaw and some of Thorin’s teeth. Later you come across fragments of a skull and the skull and phalanges of the left hand. The review is very important because this repertoire of songs has a much better capacity than it should be. There is no one in the cave. They placed it in a natural location near the outer wall of the cave, surrounded by various flint objects, later dated to around the 42nd millennium BC.

He turns her into one of the last of her kind. But for Slimak, the archaeological data of Thorin according to the hermitage that rode him is insufficient. Finally, it is in a much larger external capacity that corresponds to the last millennium of the Neanderthal species.

To clarify this unknown, it merges into one “paleopolitan” investigation where other scientific fields are used. The surprise will come again when, on the one hand, Thorin gets the carbon-14 radiometry in the 35th millennium and, on the other hand, puts paleogenetics even more into the 100th millennium.

This is when we imagine an archaeologist holding a Neanderthal jaw like Hamlet and regardless, wait for “But do you know what demons are walking around you?“.

Thorin doesn’t mind, but science does. Finally, and by correcting one of the assumptions about calibration and the assumption of false assumptions in the scientific world—considerations that have so often undermined progress—Slimak’s Neanderthal wisdom is confirmed. between 42,000 and 45,000 years ago.

Although not as recent as the carbon-14 peak, Thorin remains one of the last of his kind. At least in this part of Europe, for example, in the Gorham and Vanguard caves, in the enclosure of Gibraltar, tools of Neanderthal craftsmanship have been encountered, which are estimated to contain one 28,000 years.

It was during the discovery of the Gibraltar Caves that the French paleoanthropologist was able to launch one of his theories, which was once discovered by Clive Finlayson, director of the Gibraltar National Museum: during the last glaciation, the sea level was much lower than in reality, out of sight and available for the use of the Mediterranean coast kit that will connect with the Mediterranean coast.

According to Slimak, it is likely that in the millennia immediately preceding its extinction, the last Neanderthals would have headed for the Iberian Peninsula via this route. After all, the French archaeologist Plantea the possibility that the Ebro valley was built over time as a social border between them Homo sapiens y los Homo neanderthalensis.

Something that, on the other hand, also happened with the Rhone after the discovery on one or the other bank of the French river. Thus it is possible to check the hardware found in the factories on each side, at some point there was an exchange of knowledge that was immediately interrupted: one of them learned from the other until the feed stopped and never came back to resume.

Y without embargo, However, the nature of the combination between the two species cannot be known exactly. But even if we have no physical knowledge of the contact, we also know: Europeans carry a significant Neanderthal genetic link in our genome.

What Slimak is also sure of is the presence Homo sapiens e.g. other forms, the direct cause of the extinction of the Neanderthals.

Las poblaciones neandertales they spread to Eurasia. It is never Africa where modern man came from. This would not land in Europe for the most part until around the 57th millennium.

In 350,000 years of existence Homo neanderthalensismatched 15,000 with el Homo sapiens. 15 thousand years that were the last.

When science hits its limits and leaves many empty spaces to plant a firm conclusion, Slimak returns to logical reason and, above all, to other words in assumptions, which, he says, are false because they are planted from our subjective sphere. Or, what is the same thing, let’s talk about Neanderthal, that distant “other” like a Homo sapiensbecause they will find the same way of perceiving the world in which we live.

What makes us different from Neanderthals – says Slimak – is not their supposed saviorism or their higher intelligence on our part. If the exchange is de our ability to repeat efficiency, to homogenize. Each of the herramients made by Neanderthals is unique. Sin embargo, in case homo sapiens, “viewing 100, seeing all”, says paleoanthropologist.

Man’s “evolutionary superiority” over Neanderthal is rooted: I gave Europe a new way of understanding the world through simplification and standardization. How does it specifically affect survival Homo neanderthalensisthat “original sin” that we were all alone on our planet is still a mystery. Let’s see if we need to meet a new thinking species while we look into space to sort it out.