Humans: Neanderthal

"THERE IS NOTHING LIKE LOOKING, if you want to find something," says Thorin Oakenshield in J.R.R. Tolkien's beloved fantasy novel The Hobbit. "You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after."

- Michael Natale

For example, in 2015, researcher Ludovic Slimak made a remarkable discovery. He and his team had been working for some time to find remnants of humanity's prehistoric forebears, and they certainly found something: a piece of a Neanderthal jaw.

Eventually, several more remains of this Neanderthal were discovered. Slimak told the New Statesman in 2022 that each year after the initial discovery, they would find "one tooth, or one fragment of bone." Slimak determined that this particular Neanderthal lived 42,000 years ago.