Let them be... (08.07.2025)

We are not very good at accepting difference, or so writes the paleoanthropologist, Ludovik Slimak in his book, The Naked Neanderthal. It’s hard to disagree. From fashion to race, gender to religion, we struggle to let people be what they are. We either reject them or we try to change them, telling them they have to be like us if they want to belong.

Slimak’s book is about the Neanderthals, but it is also about us, Homo Sapiens.  We are remarkably arrogant as a species and we judge everything from our own reference point. None of this is surprising; we dominate the planet, and if we don’t start from our own experience in trying to understand the world, I don’t know where we are meant to start from.

But neither of these points excuse what we are and what we have become. Given our intelligence (we call ourselves ‘clever man’ after all), we ought to understand better and reflect more wisely on our attitudes and actions.

We are the last surviving species of the homo genus. Once upon a time, there were many more and we were contemporaneous with some of them such homo neanderthalensis and homo georgicus (the denisova people). The general acceptance is that these other homos disappeared partly (if not wholly) because of our actions. There needn’t have been mass genocide (but knowing how good we are at killing, I wouldn’t exclude it). Climate might have played a part as well as our technologically advanced hunting tools; we killed more and ate more, and we pushed the others out. Moreover, when there was interbreeding (and it seems to have happened very early on), it is more likely to have been one way: Sapiens male, Neanderthal female.

Slimak challenges our view of the Neanderthals. We see them as either subhuman or (to ease our conscience) fully human; what we never allow them to be is Neanderthal. We cannot accept their difference as a positive expression of the homo genus. We reject or we incorporate, and this, perhaps, is one of our defining characteristics as a species. The other, according to Slimak, is our love of systematisation and conformity.

It doesn’t take much to realise the two go together. If we seek to classify and codify, to define ourselves by how we order the world then we won’t like anyone that questions that ordering. Think of the scientific battles of the past (Galileo) and the religious arguments of the present.

When it comes to knowledge and technology, this has helped us enormously. According to Slimak, Neanderthal weaponry wasn’t uniform. There were basic guidelines, but each piece was unique in its formation, almost like a work of art. Not so with us. We codified and we developed; we conquered because we were systematic.

When it comes to how we interact with each other, however, history is not so kind. There are no more Neanderthals and there are no more Tasmanian Aborigines. The Selk’nam (or Ona) were nearly totally wiped out in Tierra de Fuego, and Brazilian peoples such as the Maniteneri and Marawa no longer exist. I can go on.

These are extreme expressions of our disdain for and dislike of difference. But look around you and talk to your friends. How comfortable are you with men wearing skirts or boys playing with dolls? There are stigmas around sexual orientation, disabilities, class, wealth, education. Some of these are more bothersome than others, but crossing societal norms can be deeply disturbing. They disrupt what we feel is the ‘natural’ ordering of things.

But, of course, there is no such thing as a ‘natural’ order. We choose how to divide up the world. In the West, time is lineal while in some cultures it is cyclical. We value individualism, while some societies value social harmony. We put the age of consent at 16, Bahrain at 21 and Angola at 12.

When cultures meet, there will be clashes. When races meet, there will be clashes. When the different genus of homo met, there were clashes. The moral point, is how we deal with these clashes.

We don’t have a good track-record in this regard. Yes, there is the talk of tolerance and acceptance, but deep inside most of us struggle with difference.  Perhaps we can be honest enough to recognise this, and then learn to be wiser and kinder; perhaps we can just let people be who they are.