"I am not alone": The Last Neanderthal by Claire Cameron

Image description: A drawing of a cave mouth looking out onto a mountain range. The sides of the cave resemble two faces. Text reads: "The Last Neandertal by Claire Cameron"

The Last Neanderthal was written by Claire Cameron, who previously wrote a book titled The Bear. Cameron did collaborate with archaeologists and paleoanthropologists from Stony Brook University and a few others in the writing of this book, which is evident throughout the book with the level of detail she goes into.

Here is a summary of this book:

From the author of The Bear, the enthralling story of two women separated by millennia, but linked by an epic journey that will transform them both

 40,000 years in the past, the last family of Neanderthals roams the earth. After a crushingly hard winter, their numbers are low, but Girl, the oldest daughter, is just coming of age and her family is determined to travel to the annual meeting place and find her a mate.

But the unforgiving landscape takes its toll, and Girl is left alone to care for Runt, a foundling of unknown origin. As Girl and Runt face the coming winter storms, Girl realizes she has one final chance to save her people, even if it means sacrificing part of herself.

In the modern day, archaeologist Rosamund Gale works well into her pregnancy, racing to excavate newly found Neanderthal artifacts before her baby comes. Linked across the ages by their shared experience of early motherhood, both stories examine the often taboo corners of women’s lives.

Inspired by the recent discovery that many modern humans have inherited DNA from Neanderthals, acclaimed author Claire Cameron has penned a haunting, suspenseful, and profoundly moving novel that asks us to reconsider what it means to be human.

I found this book to be incredibly interesting, with all the detail and worldbuilding that Cameron provides for Girl’s life and the life of the Neandertals around Girl. I was unfortunately not quite as invested in Dr. Gale’s story, thought I still thought her story was interesting. I really did enjoy this book, even if there were parts that sort of made me cringe.

The archaeology in this book is connected to the Lovers of Valdaro, which is a title that refers to a pair of 6,000 years old human skeletons found near Mantua in the region of Lombardo, Italy. In Cameron’s book, the Lovers are presented as a human and Neandertal skeleton, though I believe this is done for the purposes of the story which is meant to discuss connections between people.

Cameron provides a glossary for the words, though sparsely, used in the book by Girl and her family. The glossary provides an initial idea of what Neandertal culture looks like in the book and is most likely based on the archaeological ideas that we have about Neandertals. I found the use of information we have about Neandertals in the past to write this book to be super interesting, especially with the introduction of Runt, who is at the end confirmed to be a human .

Dr. Rosamund Gale is an interesting character regarding her motivation. She spends most of the book pregnant and trying to complete her excavation of the two skeletons she had found. Her research was primarily focused on the Neandertal, and she was working with a museum back in the United States where her research would be put on display. Part of the reason she insists on staying so long is because she feels that if she spends too much time away from the site, even just taking leave, could result in her name being put at the bottom of the list of people involved, or removed entirely. She doesn’t want having a baby to result in her getting sidelined. While I won’t claim to be an expert on Neandertals, her arguments for her research feel plausible to me, which I appreciated. The description of the device they make to make it easier for her to excavate while pregnant is honestly hilarious, but also much appreciated by Dr. Gale.

The Last Neanderthal is a book about the connections between humans and Neandertals, the impact that communities have on each other, and a discussion about what really makes us human.