Next time they ask you about our early forbearers’ story some 45,000 years ago or so, it might be wise to opt for an eminently modern answer: “It’s complicated”.

That’s at least what the French archeologist Ludovic Slimak would have you say. Armed with tweezers and other tools of the trade, his team in the Rhône Valley’s Mandrin Cave have spent the past nine years uncovering the 31 (out of 34) teeth, jawbone fragments, phalanges and thousand of tiny bones of the first Neanderthal body to be found in France since 1978, Thorin. The end result of their painstaking labour upends much of what we thought we knew about our heavy-browed cousins, a year after their earlier research prompted us to radically rethink Homo sapiens‘ migration to Europe. Writing exclusively for The Conversation, Slimak spells out some of the questions these findings raise: for instance, how could Thorin and other late Neanderthal lineages remain isolated for tens of thousands of years, despite living relatively close to one another? And how did Neanderthal die out?

Tell me what you think of what are generally dismissed as “weeds”, and I will tell you who you are. Another of our articles this week is a botanist’s love letter to wildflowers, alternately celebrating the evolutionary prowess of a dandelion seed’s flying where a child’s breath sends it, or poppies’ medical virtues.

The entrepreneurs among you will appreciate these plants’ ability to grow between pavement cracks and in other inhospitable places, creating life where none was apparent. Might you be able to guess which generation is the most likely to succeed in business?