Here is a book about the meeting of neanderthals and homo sapiens, told from the neanderthals perspective. Unsurprisingly, our species does not come out of it looking good. It really is incredible how our first instinct is to kill, and our second is to abduct. You do feel sorry for these Neanderthals.
The first part is the most successful, where you follow a band of 7 Neanderthals as they move from their winter to their summer locations. There is an impressive inhabiting of a mind that (from our perspective) is sort of half-way there. Then they meet the ‘bone-faced men,’ who surprise them by being bone-faced, and even more by existing, as the group had previously thought they were the only bipedals in the world.
From very first meeting you know it is going to end badly for someone, with the Neanderthals watching with interest as ‘small straight twigs’ are thrown at them by the bone-faced men. These are of course arrows, and it goes downhill from there.
I have to admit I gave up close to the end. There was a very very long section in which the Neanderthals were watching the early humans go about daily life in a clearing. I appreciate Golding was having fun sharing his research with us but I got bored. However, that said, I still enjoyed it.
PS: I learnt from the introduction – did you know Golding’s other book, LORD OF THE FLIES was widely rejected by agents while in draft?