When the first complete skeleton of a Neanderthal was discovered by three Catholic priests in 1908 in La Chapelle-aux-Saints in southern France—about 300 kilometers west of Chauvet—the Church made sure it ended up in the hands of someone who shared their worldview, Marcellin Boule, director of the Laboratory of Paleontology at Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, reconstructed the specimen so that it looked much more simian than human, with its forward-jutting head, slouching shoulders, hunched spine, bent knees and even opposable toes. Boule’s work was flawed, but it had a profound impact on
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