Life As Told by a Sapiens to a Neanderthal

Prehistory is all around us. We just need to know where to look.

Juan José Millás has always felt like he doesn’t quite fit into human society. Sometimes he wonders if he is even a Homo sapiens at all, or something simpler. Perhaps he is a Neanderthal who somehow survived? So he turns to Juan Luis Arsuaga, one of the world’s leading palaeontologists and a super-smart sapiens, to explain why we are the way we are and where we come from.

Over the course of many months, the two visit different places, many of them common scenes of our daily lives, and others unique archaeological sites. Arsuaga tries to teach the Neanderthal how to think like a sapiens and, above all, that prehistory is not a thing of the past: that traces of humanity through the millennia can be found anywhere, from a cave or a landscape to a children’s playground or a toy shop.

Millás and Arsuaga invite you on a journey of wonder that unites scientific discovery with the greatest human invention of all: the art of storytelling.

Juan José Millás is a bestselling and multi award–winning Spanish novelist and short-story writer, and an award-winning regular contributor to major Spanish newspapers. His narrative works have been translated into more than 20 languages, and include the novels From the Shadows and None Shall Sleep.

Juan Luis Arsuaga is a professor of paleontology at the Complutense University of Madrid and the director of the Human Evolution and Behaviour Institute. He is a member of the American National Academy of Sciences and of the Musée de l’Homme of Paris, a visiting professor at University College London, and a co-director of excavations at the Sierra de Atapuerca World Heritage site. He is a regular contributor to Nature, Science, and the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, is the editor of the Journal of Human Evolution, and is a regular lecturer at the universities of London, Cambridge, Berkeley, New York, Tel Aviv, and Zurich, among others. The recipient of many national and international awards, he is the author of more than a dozen works.

Thomas Bunstead is a writer and translator, and currently a Royal Literary Fellow at Aberystwyth University (2021–23). His recent translations include Portrait of an Unknown Lady by María Gainza and Skin by Sergio del Molino.

Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor, and translator, with some eighty books to his name. His work has won him the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award, and has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, among many others. His recent translations include Diamela Eltit’s Never Did the Fire, a novel, and Sidarta Ribeiro’s The Oracle of Night, a nonfiction book about neuroscience and dreaming.