VIKING, AUGUST 2016On August 3, 1908, the first near-complete Neanderthal skeleton was discovered in a cave near the village of La Chapelle-aux-Saints in south central France, during a survey of the region’s Paleolithic archaeological sites.
For decades prior, prehistorians had collected bits and pieces of curious but not-quite-human fossils from museums and excavations alike—the odd skull here, a scrap of tooth there. In 1863, the mélange of bones was finally given its own species designation, Homo neanderthalensis. Forty-five years later, the La Chapelle discovery was the first Neanderthal specimen found in an original archaeological context and the first to be expertly excavated and carefully studied. Because the body was arranged in a flexed, fetal position and carefully placed in the floor of the cave, excavators argued that fossil—nicknamed the Old Man—had been purposefully buried by his Neanderthal contemporaries.
More than any other single individual, the Old Man of La Chapelle has shaped the way that science and popular culture have ...
