Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art [Paperback]

'Beautiful, evocative, authoritative.' Professor Brian Cox

'Important reading not just for anyone interested in these ancient cousins of ours, but also for anyone interested in humanity.' Yuval Noah Harari

Kindredis the definitive guide to the Neanderthals.Since their discovery more than 160 years ago, Neanderthals have metamorphosed from the losers of the human family tree to A-list hominins.Rebecca Wragg Sykes uses her experience at the cutting-edge of Palaeolithic research to share our new understanding of Neanderthals, shoving aside clich?s of rag-clad brutes in an icy wasteland. She reveals them to be curious, clever connoisseurs of their world, technologically inventive and ecologically adaptable. Above all, they were successful survivors for more than 300,000 years, during times of massive climatic upheaval.

Much of what defines us was also in Neanderthals, and their DNA is still inside us. Planning, co-operation, altruism, craftsmanship, aesthetic sense, imagination, perhaps even a desire for transcendence beyond mortality.Kindreddoes for Neanderthals whatSapiensdid for us, revealing a deeper, more nuanced story where humanity itself is our ancient, shared inheritance.

Rebecca Wragg Sykeshas been fascinated by the vanished worlds of the Pleistocene ice ages since childhood, and followed this interest through a career researching the most enigmatic characters of all, the Neanderthals. After a PhD on the last Neanderthals living in Britain, she was a Marie Curie Fellow at the PACEA laboratory, Universit? de Bordeaux, France, working on Neanderthal landscapes and territories in the Massif Central, south-east France.

Her writing has featured in theGuardian, Aeon andScientific American, and slS