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The Neandertals: Of Skeletons, Scientists, and Scandal

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This is a fascinating and very well-written account of the discovery of the first Neandertal skeletons, and the shock waves they caused (and are still causing) throughout science.

The Victorian mania for collecting, cataloging and naming natural specimens led to the formulation of the Great Tree of Life, or Chain of Being, arranged from the lowliest organisms in an orderly progression up to "the pinnacle of creation, Man" -- or more accurately, white Anglo-Saxon Englishmen in waist-coats.

The discovery of proto-human remains in Germany in 1856 threw this 'orderliness' of nature into disarray. Did not The Bible state that everything was created all-at-once in perfect harmony? How then could an obviously human skeleton -- but equally obviously not that of a modern Englishman -- have come to rest in the soil beneath their feet?

The ripples from these discoveries were to penetrate the farthest reaches of scientific endeavor, as man began to comprehend geologic time (as opposed to the Biblical timeframe), repeated mass extinctions (as opposed to Christian creation myths) and mankind's own humble origins, starkly laid out on the table before them.

With the help of a certain Mr. Charles A. Darwin, whose own ideas on the mutability of species he had been harboring privately for 20 years, science was soon to face a new conception of itself, basing theory on evidence and logic rather than religious texts and teachings. It is a revolution which is still very much on-going today.

The authors are to be commended for making a potentially dry and technical subject come alive, with the intrigues, power struggles, vanity, hubris and anguish of the revolution ably depicted.