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 Reviews
“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
“[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
“Rebecca Wragg Sykes aims to tell a complete new story about Neanderthals. She has done a remarkable job synthesizing thousands of academic studies into a single accessible narrative. From her pages emerge new Neanderthals that are very different from the cartoon figures of old. Kindred is important reading not just for anyone interested in these ancient cousins of ours, but also for anyone interested in humanity.” —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
“Beautiful, evocative, authoritative. Kindred is a beautifully written exploration of our fast-developing understanding of Neanderthals and their culture and a compelling insight into how modern science is revealing the secrets of an extinct species who, for 350 thousand years before Homo Sapiens became dominant, inhabited a world 'as wide and rich as the Roman Empire.'” —PROFESSOR BRIAN COX, physicist and TV presenter
“Blending cutting-edge science with lyrical storytelling, Rebecca Wragg Sykes paints a detailed portrait of our enigmatic relatives.” —PROFESSOR ALICE ROBERTS, anatomist, author and broadcaster
“Kindred is a tour de force. A rich and beautiful synthesis of all that is known about Neanderthal biology and culture, it should be required reading for anyone interested in the history of humanity.” —DR TORI HERRIDGE, palaeontologist and TV presenter
“Eminently readable, creatively constructed, Sykes' work on Neanderthals is like no book you've read before on the subject.” —PROFESSOR LEE R. BERGER, University of Witswatersrand
“Wragg Sykes paints a fascinating picture of a field transformed almost beyond recognition over the past 30 years.” —New Scientist
“Rebecca Wragg Sykes's book paints a vivid portrait of our adaptable ancient relatives ... immersive.” —Nature
"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." —The Times
"Kindred is an informative and authoritative book that will appeal to budding Neanderthal investigators and all interested in learning more about the applications of modern analysis and recent interpretations of archaeological/paleontological finds." —Choice Magazine
“Sykes is a paleolithic archeologist as well as a good science writer, giving context to findings and changing archeological methods…Even if you keep up with Neanderthal discoveries in the news (like I do), this book is great for organizing those findings wholistically” —Popular Science
“Smug Homo sapiens have long looked down on Neanderthals, like city folk sneering at country cousins. Snort. You couldn't even not go extinct. But these hominins have always gotten a bad rap, and Rebecca Wragg Sykes's affectionate synthesis of a revolution in scientific understanding shows just how bad. Rather than dimwitted brutes, Neanderthals were human beings whose brains were as big or bigger than ours, who ranged from the British Isles to the Chinese border to the deserts of Arabia, who created sophisticated stone tools and developed complex adhesives such as birch tar, and who lived successfully in an ever-changing climate for more than three hundred thousand years. Oh, and interbred with Sapiens to the extent that two to three percent of our genes come from them. These people were smart, adaptable, and clever, and while there are plenty of lessons to be found in their experience (and extinction), the Kindred message that lingers longest is respect. Way overdue respect” —Adventure Journal
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.
