The Inheritors follows a band of eight neanderthals. The story primarily focuses on Lok, his partner Fa, and their daughter Liku. The other neanderthals in their tribe are presumably led by Old Woman and Mal, the two oldest members of the group, and they are accompanied by another neanderthal couple, Nil and Ha, and their newborn baby called The New One. As the novel progresses we see a lot of positive qualities often associated with humans being attributed to the neanderthals. The neanderthals bury their dead, one of them is able to make fire, they pray to a God, they have family units, and they have a strong emotional attachment to one another. The reader can see that the neanderthals are intelligent and caring creatures. As the neanderthals come into contact with primitive homo sapiens we see the real humans who possess a lot of not so positive human qualities. The humans have a great fear of the neanderthals, but they also possess tremendous intellect; building sophisticated weapons, camps, boats, and other technologically advanced devices that the neanderthals would never have been able to create. Conflict between the neanderthals and homo sapiens is inevitable and in a competitive world the neanderthals look terribly outmatched.
