An Artistic Interpretation of Neanderthals

Clive Finlayson, director of the Gibraltar Museum commissioned Dutch artists known as Kennis & Kennis to sculpt two Neanderthals, exquisitely lifelike sculptures that were scientific reconstructions, extrapolated by the artists from casts of actual fossils. (These two were based on the only Neanderthal skulls ever recovered in Gibraltar: that first woman’s skull, sent to George Busk in 1864, and another, of a child, unearthed in 1926.) They were called Nana and Flint. Finlayson’s wife, Geraldine, and son, Stewart — both scientists who work closely with him at the museum — had helped him come up with the names. The boy had his arms thrown around Nana’s waist, his cheek on her thigh. He was half-hiding himself behind her leg, as kids do, but also stared out, straight at us, slightly alarmed, or helpless. “I don’t get tired of looking at them,” Finlayson said.

Finlayson was initially taken aback by the woman’s posture in their sketches. She stood oddly, with her arms crossed in front of her chest, resting on opposite shoulders, as if she were mid-Macarena. But Kennis & Kennis barraged him with ethnographic photos: real hunter-gatherer people standing just like this, or even more strangely, their hands behind their necks or slung over their heads. As it happens, the artists had an intense personal interest in where human beings leave their hands when they don’t have pockets.

From “Neanderthals Were People, Too” by Jon Mooallem for New York Times, 2017; Photo by Jaap Scheeren

#neanderthal #neanderthalvalley #gibraltar #sculpture #sculptor #kennisandkennis #art #artist #artistic #history #evolution #mother #son #story #stories #thestorybar