Neandertals: Changing the Image of Mankind

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In 1856 – just as Darwin was completing ORIGIN OF SPECIES – the fossilized remains of a stocky, powerful human-like creature were discovered in a cave in the Neander Valley in Germany. Opinions about Neandertal Man have veered wildly ever since: he was not human at all, but closer to ape, he was human but not ancient; he was a cannibal, a shuffling, depraved halfwit; an evolutionary dead-end, wiped out by more efficient and intelligent Cro-Magnons. The controversy continues to this day. Erik Trinkaus – the world’s leading authority on Neandertals – and anthropologist Pat Shipman vividly tell the whole story, from the discovery of the bones to the latest research. Theirs is a brilliant first-hand account of the search for man’s beginnings and out of a particular man – dead for 40, 000 years – who began a revolution that changed the world.

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