Neanderthal Man by Pääbo and Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes
**Neanderthal Man by Pääbo**
This book is part autobiography and part popular science.
Pääbo is one of the key figures in sequencing the Neanderthal genome. He recounts the decades-long effort to extract usable DNA from prehistoric bones, detailing the complexity of obtaining samples, and the disputes and competitions with other scientists.
The best thing about the book is that it portrays science as it is: chaotic, political, competitive, where luck plays a part, and sometimes frustrating. Pääbo doesn't romanticize the process: laboratories contaminate samples, and rivalries arise both within and outside the team. The book reads like a thriller, much like Capote's Cold Blood; you know the final outcome, but the interesting part is getting there.
Before Neanderthal DNA was sequenced, Neanderthals were primarily interpreted through bones and stone tools. Suddenly, it became possible to know, through DNA, what they looked like, the color of their eyes and hair, and most importantly: Did Neanderthals interbreed with Homo sapiens?
And then the bombshell dropped: yes, many modern humans have Neanderthal DNA. The old model that proposed Homo sapiens completely replaced Neanderthals crumbled right then and there.
The book's tone is very much that of a Scandinavian scientist: sober, dry, calm, and, at times, humorous.
A strength of the book is its portrayal of the fragility of scientific certainty. Prehistoric DNA research developed quite strict contamination protocols because the early years were plagued by false claims. Reading it makes you appreciate how difficult it truly is to do good science.
Pääbo is a geneticist, and genetics becomes the central focus of the book. Culture, cognition, symbolic behavior, social life, etc., appear, but as secondary elements.
Pääbo won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2022.
**Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes**.
This book forcefully attacks the stereotype of the brutish, almost bestial Neanderthal.
While Pääbo's book takes place in the laboratory, Sykes delves into the landscape: caves, tools, fire, migration routes, climate change, hunting grounds, social networks, and the physical reality of survival in Ice Age Eurasia.
Kindred's great achievement lies in humanizing the Neanderthals.
Sykes argues that Neanderthals were intelligent and adaptable humans with a rich cultural life (though I find this questionable, it's just speculation), but at the same time different from Homo sapiens. Their bodies, technology, and perhaps even their cognition developed along a distinct evolutionary path over hundreds of thousands of years, but not so distinct as to prevent reproduction.
The central theme of the book is that Neanderthals were not an evolutionary failure. They survived for a considerable time in brutal climates and vast territories.
Sykes constantly reminds the reader of the biases and errors of 19th-century archaeology. Victorian and early 20th-century researchers often interpreted Neanderthal remains based on assumptions about "primitive races," industrial progress, and linear evolution. There was a time when Neanderthals were considered proto-humans, the missing link.
One of the book's greatest strengths is its intellectual humility. Sykes constantly distinguishes between what we know, what we strongly suspect, and what remains speculation. This was one of my preconceived notions before reading the book: is it all just speculation?
Kindred offers a more comprehensive view than Neanderthal Man, but I personally preferred Neanderthal Man.
To paraphrase StoryGraph's AI: If you're looking for vivid reconstructions of how Neanderthals lived day-to-day, read Kindred. Read Neanderthal Man if you want to understand how the scientific method actually works; this is the book for you.
Both books complement each other quite well.