This is one of the Neanderthal footprints discovered at Le Rozel. (Credit: Image courtesy of Dominique Cliquet)

At first glimpse, it looks like the Neanderthals might have just vanished around the corner. Their footprints are engraved in the soft oceanside rock, like photographic negatives of their passage, seemingly ready to be swept away by the nearby ocean.

In reality, the impressions are around 80,000 years old, pressed into ancient sediments by a group of ancient humans and preserved