Ludovic Slimak is a paleoanthropologist at the University of Toulouse and Director of the Grotte Mandrin research project. His work focuses on the last Neanderthal societies and he is the author of several hundred scientific studies on these populations. His research has been featured in Nature, Science, Cell, The New York Times, the Guardian and elsewhere.

"A poetic scientist is a rare bird - don't miss this."Desmond Morris, author of The Naked Ape"What a book! A sparkling detective story, a bonfire of tired paradigms, and a dramatic interrogation of that crucial question: what sort of creatures are we?"Charles Foster, author of The Edges of the World"Immersing yourself in the world of these lost people in The Last Neanderthal is a rare treat."New Scientist"A major finding"Kirkus Reviews

• First wordsChapter I - Unexpected complications on the way to the unthoughtBoldly risking a step into the unknownAnother place, another time?French poems…Wandering through the naves of our thermonuclear cathedralsNanotechnologies of the first humansFrom impressionistic dots to thick linesA thousand millennia of Anatolian transgressionsMythologies of the first modern humansHuman beings known as shadowsA first contact with inverted valuesMaking the best of a bad jobChapter II - The last Neanderthal? An improbable encounterThe last Neanderthal!The imaginary realms lying between two worldsUpside down... Thorin is one hundred and five millennia old!From rivers that unite to rivers that separateLight beyond the unknown landsA last Neanderthal, in his place? Touching the unquantifiableFrom flesh to boneThe mind in matter and the gaze versus realityMental processes on the edge of the holeFor a few centimetres too manyThe first of the last contacts?Three waves breaking against the intellectual TitanicGenetic surprisesThe stone shipGone with the WindThe oases of the seaA simplified worldChapter III - How do humans die?A grammar between two worldsApology for the stifledNo one escapes the sphereMen from the sky and white opossumsThe gods must be crazyAcculturation and the implosions of the spheresMen in the treesThe gods must be crazy 2.0In our disordered memoriesThe times of extinctionEpilogue. This is how humans dieAcknowledgements

1. 4/5

   A more personal view from his previous work...

   At the top of his field, a perceptive book, but we should be glad he is in anthropology, and not in politics.

   John H

   15 oktober 2025