Neanderthal: Neanderthal Man and the Story of Human Origins

Neanderthal Man has a legendary status. His stocky, hairy, human-like figure, with heavy brow and receding chin, lumbers clumsily around in our collective imagination. We are apt to apply his name to people for whom we have a low regard. We like to think of ourselves as so very much more sophisticated, intelligent, evolved than Neanderthal folk. But do we know who Neanderthal man really is? Was he our direct ancestor, or was he perhaps a more alien figure, not in the line of modern human de...