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🗿 When a Culture No Longer Wants to Live

Paleoanthropologist Ludovic Slimak pushes past the 'Neanderthals were basically us' rehabilitation to something more unsettling: what if they were genuinely different — different minds, different relationships to territory and meaning? He suggests their disappearance followed a collapse of

Danu Poyner

· 1 minute

When a culture no longer wants to live
english.elpais.com

Paleoanthropologist Ludovic Slimak pushes past the 'Neanderthals were basically us' rehabilitation to something more unsettling: what if they were genuinely different — different minds, different relationships to territory and meaning? He suggests their disappearance followed a collapse of their 'mental sphere' after contact with us. 'We've killed Neanderthals for the second time by not wanting to understand them.' Circles an uncomfortably contemporary question: what makes a culture lose the will to continue?

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Danu Poyner

Danu is a writer and founder of Grokkist, a learning community in the deepest sense. His work centres on coherence, curiosity, and helping people make sense of themselves in relation to ideas, experience, and one another.

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