Sublime

In 1908, a Neanderthal skeleton was discovered during excavations of a cave in the Bouffia Bonneval, in La Chapelle-aux-Saints in southern France. The skeleton was fairly complete – the skull, most of the spine, some ribs, the long bones of the arms and legs, and some of the hand and foot bones, were there. The skull is ‘classic’ Neanderthal, with

Just as woodpeckers specialise in extracting insects from the trunks of trees, the first humans specialised in extracting marrow from bones.

We don’t know exactly where and when animals that can be classified as Homo sapiens first evolved from some earlier type of humans, but most scientists agree that by 150,000 years ago, East Africa was populated by Sapiens that looked just like us. If one of them turned up in a modern morgue, the local pathologist would notice nothing peculiar.

And why not? Today there are many species of foxes, bears and pigs. The earth of a hundred millennia ago was walked by at least six different species of man.