Using such ideas, we might reimagine Neanderthal interactions with other animals. Current interpretations are structured around themes of dominance, exploitation and conflict; life as struggle against nature, and animals as unthinking, unfeeling commodities. In stark contrast, relational frameworks emphasise the similarities between human and non-human. Hierarchies exist, blood is still spilled, but a relational world is filled with communities based on recognition of common personhood, of which humans are members, not masters. Human survival is not in conflict with creatures, but entwined in
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