Neanderthal man has a legendary status. His stocky, hairy, human-like figure, with heavy brow and receding chin, lumbers clumsily around in our collective imagination. But do we know who Neanderthal man really is? Was he our direct ancestor, or was he perhaps a more alien figure, not in the line of modern human descent at all, genetically very distinct - the victim rather than the driving force of the spread of humankind across the globe? The original Neanderthal bones were unearthed to great scholarly excitement in the Neander valley in Germany in the mid-19th century. This work brings together all the research into Homo sapiens neanderthalensis; into his world, his technology, his way of life (and death, even his beliefs), his origins and his relationship with us.
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Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Paul Jordan read archaeology at Cambridge University and was for many years a writer and producer of television programs about science, history and archaeology with the BBC.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An outstanding, informative and up-to-date survey.,
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Neanderthal (Hardcover)
In Neanderthal: Neanderthal Man And The Story Of Human Origins , Paul Jordan draws upon his archaeological expertise to bring the reader up to date on our current understandings and interpretations of the Neanderthal species and its relationship to homo sapiens. Recently genetic testing on original bones from Germany show that the Neanderthal are not our direct ancestors, but rather a hominid off-shoot from a common ancestor shared with homo sapiens, having diverged from our line of evolution at least half a million years ago and doomed to die out during the last ice age. Jordan also surveys the evidence of about five thousand years of overlapping co-existence with homo sapiens, and some archaeological signs of interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthal types. Neanderthal brings together under one cover all the research into the Neanderthal, their world, technology, way of life, death rituals, origins, and relationships to modern man. Ideal for the non-specialist general reader, Neanderthal is enhanced with more than one hundred black and white illustrations and eight pages of color photography. Also highly recommended are Paul Jordan's early works: Early Man; Riddles Of The Sphinx; and Ancestral Images: The Iconography Of Human Origins.
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
kissing cousins,
This review is from: Neanderthal (Hardcover)
Paul Jordan writes about our close evolutionary cousins in a readable style which is honest and informative without the unfortunate trend by some popular writers on human origins to dumb-it-down. The Neanderthals (FYI pronounced Ny-And-Er-Tals) are presented as a complex and successful (for their time) relative of homo sapiens sapiens, enigmatically similar and yet quite different in many respects. Hardly the dumb, uncaring brutes of popular culture. The book contains detailed, but readable, explanations of the fossil record for (sometimes competing) theories about Neanderthal society, tool making and physiology. Jordan's great strength is his ability to produce a readable narrative while not shying away from admitting the ambiguities that exist. This is Science at its best - a complex and exciting puzzle honestly expounded. My only complaint is the lack of diagrams of time lines showing ice ages and contemporaneous fossil evidence and something of the evolutionary bush (albeit conjectured) of human and near human species.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
kissing cousins,
This review is from: Neanderthal (Hardcover)
Paul Jordan writes about our closest cousins in a style which is highly informative without the recent trend by some popular writers on human origins to dumb-it-down. The Neanderthals (FYI pronounced Ny-And-Er-Tals) are presented as a complex and successful (for their time) relative of homo sapiens sapiens, enigmatically similar and yet quite different in many respects. Hardly the dumb, uncaring brutes of popular culture. The book contains detailed, but readable, explanations of the fossil record for (sometimes competing) theories about Neanderthal society, tool making and physiology. Jordan's great strength is his ability to produce a readable narrative while not shying away from admitting the ambiguities that exist. This is Science at its best - a complex and exciting puzzle honestly expounded. My only complaint is the lack of diagrams of time lines showing ice ages and contemporaneous fossil evidence and something of the evolutionary bush (albeit conjectured) of human and near human species.
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