Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

by Rebecca Wragg Sykes

Overview

"Kindred is important reading not just for anyone interested in these ancient cousins of ours, but also for anyone interested in humanity."—The New York Times Book Review

"[A] bold and magnificent attempt to resurrect our Neanderthal kin."—The Wall Street Journal

In Kindred, Neanderthal expert Rebecca Wragg Sykes shoves aside the cliché of the shivering ragged figure in an icy wasteland, and reveals the Neanderthal you don’t know, our ancestor who lived across vast and diverse tracts of Eurasia and survived through hundreds of thousands of years of massive climate change. This book sheds new light on where they lived, what they ate, and the increasingly complex Neanderthal culture that researchers have discovered.

Since their discovery 150 years ago, Neanderthals have gone from the losers of the human family tree to A-list hominins. Our perception of the Neanderthal has changed dramatically, but despite growing scientific curiosity, popular culture fascination, and a wealth of coverage in the media and beyond are we getting the whole story? The reality of 21st century Neanderthals is complex and fascinating, yet remains virtually unknown and inaccessible outside the scientific literature.

Based on the author’s first-hand experience at the cutting-edge of Palaeolithic research and theory, this easy-to-read but information-rich book lays out the first full picture we have of the Neanderthals, from amazing new discoveries changing our view of them forever, to the more enduring mysteries of how they lived and died, and the biggest question of them all: their relationship with modern humans.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472937490
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	10/27/2020
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	6,995
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Rebecca Wragg Sykes has been fascinated by the vanished worlds of the Pleistocene ice ages since childhood, and followed this interest through a career researching the most enigmatic characters of all, the Neanderthals. After a PhD on the last Neanderthals living in Britain, she worked in France at the world-famous PACEA laboratory, Université de Bordeaux, on topics ranging from Neanderthal landscapes and territories in the Massif Central region of south-east France, to examining how they were the first ancient humans to produce a synthetic material and tools made of multiple parts.

Alongside her academic activities, she has also also earned a reputation for exceptional public engagement. The public can follow her research through a personal blog and Twitter account, and she frequently writes for the popular media, including the Scientific American and Guardian science blogs. Becky is passionate about sharing the privileged access scientists have to fascinating discoveries about the Neanderthals. She is also co-founder of the influential Trowelblazers project, which highlights women archaeologists, palaeontologists and geologists through innovative outreach and collaboration.

@LeMoustier

Table of Contents

A Note on Names 7

Introduction 9

Chapter 1 The First Face 17

Chapter 2 The River Fells the Tree 33

Chapter 3 Bodies Growing 41

Chapter 4 Bodies Living 61

Chapter 5 Ice and Fire 81

Chapter 6 The Rocks Remain 97

Chapter 7 Material World 121

Chapter 8 Eat and Live 139

Chapter 9 Chez Neanderthal 173

Chapter 10 Into the Land 201

Chapter 11 Beautiful Things 239

Chapter 12 Minds Inside 265

Chapter 13 Many Ways to Die 281

Chapter 14 Time Travellers in the Blood 317

Chapter 15 Denouements 335

Chapter 16 Immortal Beloved 357

Epilogue 383

Acknowledgements 387

Index 391

Editorial Reviews

08/10/2020

Sykes, in her fine debut, draws on her expertise as an anthropologist to create an up-to-date depiction of the Neanderthals as not the “dullard losers on a withered branch of the family tree” she thinks they’ve too often been portrayed as, but as “enormously adaptable and even successful ancient relatives.” She demonstrates how cutting-edge science has illuminated numerous aspects of these archaic humans’ lives, from birth (she speculates Neanderthal females acted as midwives for each other during delivery) to death (likely marked by an array of burial rituals). Sophisticated geological and 3D mapping techniques have allowed paleontologists to study minute traces left by the hearth fires around which Neanderthals lived, yielding “the frankly mind-blowing ability to ‘see’ a single evening from more than 90,000 years ago.” Sykes also cites evidence Neanderthals had a meaningful sense of numeracy, a distinct aesthetic tradition, a knack for technological innovation evinced by carefully wrought stone tools, and a far wider diet, including a variety of fruits, vegetables, and grains, than previously assumed. Throughout, Sykes makes the case that Neanderthals were not all that different from Homo sapiens, biologically and behaviorally, and asks the provocative question of “why we are here and not them.” While she has no conclusive answer to provide, she brings the history of this long-extinct species to life in assured fashion. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

2020-07-22
Everything you ever wanted to know about our closest relative.

Wragg Sykes has made a career studying Neanderthals, and she skillfully lays out a massive amount of information, much of which has turned up over the past few decades. Although not the first, the Neanderthal bones unearthed by German miners in 1856 were the first recognized as different from modern humans. Since some experts insisted that these were simply a contemporary with bone disease, serious study only began at the end of the century after more discoveries. Despite countless popular portrayals, the average Neanderthal was not a hunchbacked caveman: “Somewhat shorter than average,” writes the author, “with broader chests and little waists, their limb proportions were also slightly different. Beneath massively muscled thighs were thicker, rounder and slightly curved leg bones…unlike countless inaccurate reconstructions they absolutely walked as upright as us.” Dressed properly and passing on a city street, a Neanderthal would attract no attention. Appearing in Europe about 400,000 years ago, Neanderthals possessed impressive hunting skills, a complex social life, and technology as advanced as modern Homo sapiens, who arrived about 50,000 years ago and drove them to extinction 10,000 years ago—for reasons about which Wragg Sykes and her colleagues continue to speculate. Early field researchers carried off bones and tools and discarded everything else. Modern scientists return to old sites and carefully sift through tons of dirt to retrieve bits of vegetation, chemicals, bone fragments, microfossils, pollen, and trash. High-tech scanners and computers pour out a stream of revelations. Scientists scrape plaque from old teeth, put it under the microscope, and learn what they ate, the parasites they harbored, the tools they built, and the smoke they breathed. Many chapters, including 35 pages on the Neanderthal diet, reveal almost too much, but Wragg Sykes clearly loves her subject, so educated readers will have no trouble absorbing the spectacular revelations of modern anthropology.

Solid popular science.

Kirkus Reviews

[The] information that Sykes evocatively and enthusiastically presents enables readers to appreciate Neanderthals as sentient creatures, and possibly imagine themselves sharing, Jean Auel–like, a Pleistocene encounter with them. Every library needs its science up to date; Sykes delivers.” —Booklist, starred review

“Sykes, in her fine debut, draws on her expertise as an anthropologist to create an up-to-date depiction of the Neanderthals … she brings the history of this long-extinct species to life in assured fashion.” —Publishers Weekly

“Important reading not just for anyone interested in these ancient cousins of ours, but also for anyone interested in humanity. - Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens” —The New York Times Book Review

“[T]hrough painstaking forensic analysis of an eclectic collection of fragmented artifacts, and in a manner at times achieving the suspense and excitement of a Hollywood thriller, Ms. Wragg Sykes makes a bold and magnificent attempt to resurrect our Neanderthal kin.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Everything you ever wanted to know about our closest relative. Sykes has made a career studying Neanderthals, and she skillfully lays out a massive amount of information ... Solid popular science.” —Kirkus

“Rebecca Wragg-Sykes's fact-packed but highly readable book puts us right with a superbly authoritative guided tour of much new evidence. It's tempting to say. "If you read only one book about the Neanderthals, read this one" — except that if the next 20 years provide as many revelations about our ancestors as the past 20 have done, she will need to produce just as weighty a second volume.” —Richard Morrison, The Times

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