Rebecca Wragg Sykes

Yesterday afternoon on the way home from helping out a friend, my wife and I took a right turn off the highway to visit a pavilion protecting ancient rock carvings by the indigenous peoples of the region between 500-1100 years ago.

These rock carvings are sometimes thought to have been designed and created by shamans, sort of rabbis of the land, individuals gifted with an insight or possibly direct connection with the spirit kingdom.

When Europeans conquered these lands, much of the ethos that managed these lands prior to the European conquest was lost.

In its place we have shopping malls, “social” media, and CO2-belching roadways. They are some of the fruit of progress and might cause a thinking person to reflect differently on so-called primitive cultures.

Since Neanderthals began rising out of the mist of our primordial past, they too faced this stigma of a primitiveness that prevented us from appreciating their stay on this planet hundreds of thousands of years before their stay was done.

This book brings the research on Neanderthal up to date, and so much good work has accelerated our appreciation of where this species stands in the story of homo sapiens. And with gene-mapping technology, the story gets even more interesting.

We don’t know what Neanderthals thought, but we now see them in light of their innovations, survival skills, and social organization. But also in light of how climate and geological change may have influenced them as well.… (mere)

Until a geological eye-blink ago, there existed more than one human species on this planet, and what is more, people indistinguishable from contemporary humans interacted, knew and even bred with them. This fact that is a source of endless fascination to me. This book is as comprehensive a review of the state of knowledge about the most well known of these, the Neanderthals, as can reasonably be delivered in the form of something like a popular science book. Such a great volume of information is presented that it may take some work to get the most out of, particularly for those without a "palaeo" background. But it is worth it. Each chapter begins with a lovely illustration and a scene-setting vignette, who's inspiration is thoroughly detailed within the following chapter. These achieve their job admirably, even if their merits as poetic prose/prose-poetry are variable. The bulk of each chapter deals with the evidence for a particular area of inquiry in Neanderthal research, not as a dry academic exercise in exhaustively detailing every piece of information available, but as a survey of the most salient discoveries that over the course of the book, creates an overview of who Neanderthals were, what they did in their varied landscapes and how they related to others, including sapiens. It is an understanding that gives one at once a feeling of privilege, sense of loss tinged wonder and a grounding view of one's own place in the world.… (mere)