Just 28,000 years ago, the Neanderthal era ended in caves near the Strait of Gibraltar. We used to consider them rude, clumsy and not too quick-witted people, over whom our clever and cunning ancestors easily prevailed... But was it really so simple? If we consider the pedigree of mankind as a scheme with intersecting branches, it turns out that there are a lot of similarities between individual species of people. In addition, most of the signs of the so-called cognitive revolution were inherent in Neanderthals. Clive Finlayson is sure that the fate of Neanderthals and "modern people" was determined by environmental factors. If the climate had not changed in our favor about 50 million years ago, things could have turned out differently...