James Shreeve

This is three interwoven stories.

The first is the story of the Neandertals: who they were, what they did, where they came from and where they went, who were their predecessors, successors and neighbors, and what kind of world they inhabited. The field is continually refreshed by new archaelogical and genetic studies. The author, not a scientist but a writer, amasses and organizes the facts in an interesting and skillful way and writes rather well about the science. The approach is largely chronological, tracking the history of archaeological discoveries in the field. There is a very occasional clumsiness or loose end, but this story fascinated me, and I recommend it to anyone with a healthy curiosity about our humanness. These Neandertals, our cousins, survived and reproduced continually for a quarter million years through ice ages and other catastrophies until somehow disappearing about 35,000 years ago, after the appearance of fully moderm humans in Europe. We have yet a very long way to go to match that record of success.

The second story tells how the archaeological evidence was discovered and about scientists who collected and evaluate it. To anyone not familiar with the usual professional squabbles in any field or with the dialectic that characterizes good science, this second story should be instructive, even if the personalities don't always spring to life.

The third story tells of the author's experiences in meeting and interviewing the scientists. The writing here is unfortunate (in a published book) and seems different in character from the rest, as though the author had farmed out this descriptive task to a middling high schooler. No adjective, comma or figure of speech is safe. Editors may have failed the author in this regard. While you can scan some of it, your eye will catch an important word, and then you must go back and read again. This wears heavily on the patience. As the book proceeds, there is ever less of this writing. Anyway it takes up only the smaller part of the book.

Reduced to schillings and pence, how does it add up? Five stars for Story 1, three stars for Story 2, and one star for Story 3. So three stars. But forewarned is forearmed: if you are reading this, then two stars more, one more for the book and one for you. I could do with one, also, I'm sure.

I am glad I read the book. There is some new science since the book was published, but you can catch up on that: check Wikipedia for "Denisova hominin". The new evidence suggests, among other things, that Neandertals did mate with modern humans, contributing about 4% of their DNA to the modern but non-African human genome and further suggests that adaptive selective pressures may account for its retention.
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