![]() ![]() "Neanderthal" is a popular insult, meant to refer to stooped and club-wielding cave people who could hunt pretty well in their Ice Age habitats but were inferior in every way to our own early ancestors. Neanderthals "possess pop-cultural cachet like no other extinct human species," Wragg Sykes says, but too much of that cachet is constructed from stereotypes. In Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, archaeologist and science writer Rebecca Wragg Sykes explains in splendidly engaging prose why this fact is cause for wonder and celebration. ![]() If your ancestry traces back to populations outside sub-Saharan Africa, there's a good chance that your genome includes contributions from Neanderthals. Neandertals are ancient humans who sometimes mated with early Homo sapiens in Europe and Asia - then went extinct around 40,000 years ago. Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, Rebecca Wragg Sykes / Bloomsbury Sigma ![]()
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