Upper Pleistocene: Neanderthals and Sapiens, the Great Encounter (130,000 to 40,000 Years Ago)
For millennia, two humanities coexisted on the same continent: Neanderthals, masters of Europe for 200,000 years, and Homo sapiens, freshly arrived from Africa. Between 130,000 and 40,000 years ago, they may have exchanged goods, reproduced together, and developed the first symbolic behaviours. Then one disappeared. This dossier traces this encounter through morphology, Mousterian culture, the first burials, migration routes and the genetic revolution that revealed 2% Neanderthal DNA in our genomes.
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