Life was 'extremely demanding' for them, in terms of making a living. More than climate, experience sculpted their bodies. For years, this anatomy was explained as adaptation to glacial conditions but it turns out that Neanderthals thrived also in steppe-tundra and even Mediterranean woodlands. Their bodies were short and robustly muscled their skulls featured brow ridges, prominent noses, and an occipital bun (bump) in the back. Of course, Neanderthals didn't look like we do. They adopted symbolic cultural practices and expressed profound emotions as they lived day by day. The facts show that as innovative tool- and fire-makers, Neanderthals adapted to changing climates. She describes evidence comprehensively across time (Neanderthals first appeared around 350,000 years ago) and space (Neanderthals lived 'from north Wales across to the borders of China, and southwards to the fringes of Arabia's deserts'). More than any other book in paleoanthropology I've read, Wragg Sykes convincingly blows up those simplistic views. When in the early '90s I began to teach human evolution to college students, even the scientific consensus claimed that Neanderthals, compared to early Homo sapiens, tended to remain locally near their hearth and home sites, eking out a living and incapable of much creativity beyond basic survival. 'Neanderthal' is a popular insult, meant to refer to stooped and club-wielding cave people who could hunt pretty well in their Ice Age habitats but were inferior in every way to our own early ancestors. Neanderthals 'possess pop-cultural cachet like no other extinct human species,' Wragg Sykes says, but too much of that cachet is constructed from stereotypes. In Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, archaeologist and science writer Rebecca Wragg Sykes explains in splendidly engaging prose why this fact is cause for wonder and celebration. If your ancestry traces back to populations outside sub-Saharan Africa, there's a good chance that your genome includes contributions from Neanderthals. Neandertals are ancient humans who sometimes mated with early Homo sapiens in Europe and Asia - then went extinct around 40,000 years ago.

Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, Rebecca Wragg Sykes

Kindred rebecca sykes