Marylène Patou-Mathis (born 16 June 1955 in Paris), is a French prehistorian academic and a specialist in the behavior of the Neanderthals and the San people.

[2] Before joining the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in 1989, she lived for three months among the San people, hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana.

"[3] The first studies in the 19th century considered the Neanderthal to be a violent being with a limited brain, but the work of Patou-Mathis has presented evidence countering that image such as their use of medicinal plants, care of dependent clan members, treatment of fractures and burial of their dead with funeral rites.

[4] She has deconstructed the image of Paleolithic societies that implied that tasks were distributed according to the sex of the person, where women had a lower status than men, and she has said these theories have not been supported by archaeological evidence.

[2][4] In the Prehistory department of the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN), Patou-Mathis was the vice-president of the scientific council from 2011 to 2014 and director from 2013 to 2018 of the team "Behavior of Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans placed in their paleo-ecological context" of the joint research unit UMR 7194 of the CNRS.