INTERVIEW. “The extinction of Neanderthals could relate to our own future extinction”, for archaeologist Ludovic Slimak
Neanderthal, object of fascination for Ludovic Slimak, paleoanthropologist from Toulouse. •
BART MAAT / EPA/ANPA few weeks ago, archeology researcher from Toulouse (Haute-Garonne) Ludovic Slimak published the report of his research and that of his teams. The result is a 12,000-year-old questioning of the arrival in Europe of modern man, Homo sapiens, and a new look at the extinction of Neanderthals.
In his book “ The Last Neanderthal ”, Ludovic Slimak, paleoanthropologist from Toulouse , publishes the results of his research. They call into question the appearance of modern man on the Old Continent , and therefore the scenario of the extinction of Neanderthals.
According to him, the stage that we currently thought was the first wave of colonization of Homo Sapiens on European soil (42,000 years ago) would in fact be the last . There would actually have been much earlier settlements. Two waves would have preceded it, the first 12,000 years earlier, or 54,000 years ago.
To arrive at these conclusions, the researcher and his teams based themselves on flint samples found in a cave in the Rhône valley. Explanations with Ludovic Slimak himself.
Ludovic Slimak, a paleoanthropologist and archaeologist from Toulouse, studied more than a thousand Paleolithic flints. According to him, Homo Sapiens was present in Europe 12,000 years earlier than previously believed. •
Xavier Marchand / FTVFrance 3 Occitanie: Is this assortment of flint the heart of your study?
Ludovic Slimak: Yes, it’s a collection from the Mandrin cave, in the Rhône valley . These flints, with the Oxford teams, we estimated to be 54,000 years before our era . And in their design, they have exactly the same technology as flints found in the Eastern Mediterranean, of Homo sapiens origin. This is what I called Neronian technology .
These Rhône flints allow us to know that Homo sapiens was present in Europe as early as 54,000 BC, i.e. 12,000 years earlier than previously thought.
One of the original Sapiens flints found in the Mandrin cave. •
Xavier Marchand / FTVFrance 3 Occitanie: What is special about these flints?
Ludovic Slimak: They are remarkable in their design. Around 1,500 were found, all produced in series . They are extraordinarily standardized.
With flints of this type, placed at the end of an arrow, one could pierce a goat right through without worry.
A point of flint, it reads like a book. It tells us much more than the object, it details all the phases of artisanal production which led to this technology.
A reconstruction of an arrow with a flint of Sapiens origin as the tip. •
Xavier Marchand / FTVFrance 3 Occitanie: Is this the most precious object of your research? Ludovic Slimak: The ideal is when we find teeth. But for example in the Mandrin cave, 9 have been found in 30 years. Realize it. These teeth provide a very precise record of history, from 120,000 years BCE, until the extinction of Neanderthals. France 3 Occitanie: Neanderthals are your favorite subject. Ludovic Slimak: Yes, I have written two books on the subject. “ Nude Neanderthal ” ( Editions Odile Jacob, 2022) , and “The Last Neanderthal” (2023) . In 2015, with my teams, we discovered a Neanderthal body in the Mandrin cave. The first in France since 1979. Since then, we have searched grain by grain with tweezers. We still have 15 or 20 years of work to unravel the mysteries of this remarkable discovery. .
Ludovic Slimak carefully preserves the flint samples on which he bases his research. •
Xavier Marchand / FTV?France 3 Occitanie: Why dedicate your life to the study of Neanderthals
Ludovic Slimak: Since I was little, I have been passionate about archaeology. And this moment of contact between the Neanderthal and Homo sapiens populations is the great phase in the history of humanity.
The end of Neanderthals, this precise moment, is the last great extinction of humanity. In our study, we estimate it at 42,000 BCE, during a third wave of colonization by Homo sapiens.
The question we then ask ourselves is how such a developed and creative humanity could have suddenly died out without us understanding the cause. This is a major event in our history.
That's why for 30 years, I've been investing in going and scratching in the caves, tracking down the Neanderthal "Creature".
Because for me, it's a creature. I don't call him "human", otherwise I wouldn't be able to detach myself from him, and say that he wasn't really like us. We see it in his craftsmanship, Neanderthals do not have the same mental structure as us.
Ludovic Slimak published the account of his work in two works: “Nude Neanderthal” and “The Last Neanderthal”. •
Xavier Marchand / FTVFrance 3 Occitanie: Are you in awe of Neanderthal?
Ludovic Slimak: I can guarantee you that they are fascinating. But I'm not in awe. I seek to understand them, as an object of study. They have so much to teach us about our own societies. It is therefore passion more than admiration. Who knows, maybe they were bad guys! (laughs).
The paleoanthropologist has condensed 30 years of research into these approximately 800 pages of archives. •
Xavier Marchand / FTVFrance 3 Occitanie: Will you one day be able to answer the question “how did Neanderthals become extinct?”
Ludovic Slimak: I can touch the answer. In my book (The Last Neanderthal, Éditions Odile Jacob, May 2023), I arrived at a fairly unexpected pattern of extinction, where I opened the doors of my thought. So, I'm not going to spoil the contents of the book, but this Neanderthal extinction could very well relate to our own future extinction.
?France 3 Occitanie: That is to say
Ludovic Slimak: When we think of the extinction of humanity, we think “bim bam boom”, an epidemic, a meteorite, a major climatic upheaval. But these are imaginaries taken from the thought structure of our Sapiens societies. The mental structure, and therefore the imagination, of Neanderthals is different, and it is perhaps in this direction that we should dig to outline this future extinction of Man.
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