New World Sapiens: Farewell, Neanderthal

Around 42,000 years ago, in the vast wilderness of the European Ice Age, several waves of Homo sapiens began to appear. Whilst the indigenous Neanderthal populations gradually died out, the sapiens developed networks – routes for encounters, gatherings and alliances – across these territories.

Recent archaeological discoveries suggest that these intrepid peoples brought with them new concepts regarding their understanding of nature and, symbolically reflecting these interpretations, developed a mythological system depicted in works of art (ivory artefacts and cave paintings) which would spread rapidly across western Europe as a shared cultural expression.

This documentary reveals the existence of the earliest routes of cultural exchange across a vast and hostile world, where groups of Homo sapiens were, nevertheless, very few in number.