I found this book informative and oddly poetic but I found it hard to stick with it. I am usually fascinated by the topic but I had to keep forcing myself to read more and putting it down to read other books. It’s a great source for those interested in the topic though.

If your view of a Neanderthal is a sloped-head, grunting, not-so-bright guy hunched against blowing snow while he tracks a mammoth, unaware of his impending extinction and eventual supplantation by his far-smarter and much smugger cousins (that would be us), it’s time to update that image. And archaeologist Rebecca Wragg Sykes has just the method of doing so: her fascinating, detailed, and vivid recreation of our ancestor: Kindred: Neanderthal, life, love, and death, and art.

For the longest time Neanderthals were seen as a failed species: brutish, dull, dumb, mute, violent creatures just a step above gorillas. That view started to change somewhat about twenty years thanks to new discoveries and some new methodology. But as Sykes does an excellent job showing, newer technologies have exploded our concepts of just who Neanderthals were, how they lived what their capabilities were. The technology employed today is mind-boggling and not all that long ago would have been seen as the realm of science fiction and is so much better that scientists don’t need to discover new sites at all (though it helps). Instead, they are going back to long excavated sites and looking at them again through a far sharper lens. Sykes explains how researchers can use isotopes from teeth thousands of years old to tell what that person ate and where they lived, employ 3-D scanning technology and lasers to take even the smallest flotsam and jetsam of artifacts and piece them together into reconstructed tools (while also reverse-engineering the exact methods used to make said tool), and have even invented a new science called fuliginochronology which lets them look at nano-scale traces of soot to tell how many times a cave was occupied over a given time period. The ingenuity is incredible.

And what does all that ingenuity get us? As you can see from the title, Sykes gives us a broad-range view of Neanderthals (after covering some of the history of their discovery): summarizing recent findings and/or theories regarding their biology, technologies, diets, seasonal habits, social and family structures, hunting methods, communication, views on art and death, and their extinction. And it’s all fascinating.

One of the most basic yet still startling ideas is just how diverse Neanderthals were. Many of us grew up with that image of them tracking mammoths in the snow, viewing them as Ice Age creatures only. But as Sykes makes clear, over their roughly 300, 000 years (a range of time we often forget), Neanderthals lived across a variety of global climates, including some that were warmer even then our own. As well, they lived in a multitude of habitats from steppe tundra to coastal areas to woodlands and hunted a variety of game. Mammoths, yes, but also deer, rabbits, birds, and half-ton horses. The tools they used also are more diverse than imagined. For most of the time since their discovery, they were derided as stagnant when it came to technology, but more discoveries and better techniques reveal they created a wide range of tools (including working not just in stone but in wood, bone, and shell as well), and both tools and methods of making them changed over time. As well, we now know they controlled fire, tanned leather, and made cord. In fact, almost every new finding shows just how more complex and diverse Neanderthals were. Far from “cavemen meat-eaters”, for instance, seafood and plants made up a large part of their diet as well, depending on time and location.

This increasing sense of complexity seems true as well when we move to admittedly more speculative areas, such as their family lives, social constructs, views on art and death. However they thought of “art” though, whether they had the same sense of symbolic representation as we do (and why should they?), recent discoveries and methods leave no doubt that Neanderthals transformed their environment and objects: using red-ochre on objects, building a ring structure of broken-off stalagmites, etching bones, and building outside camps with “divisions of space.” We can’t know what was in their head when they did these things, but there is no longer any denying they did them. The same is true when it comes to the Neanderthal attitude toward death. While Sykes rightly points out that some of the more sensationalized “discoveries”, say of Neanderthals leaving flowers on graves, have either been disproven or called into question, she also exhaustively takes us through the evidence that supports the idea that Neanderthals viewed the dead body as more than just an empty husk to shrug and move on from, whether its placement of the body, the digging of a burial pit, cut marks on bone showing a sort of specialized butchering (i.e. different from that done with animal carcasses), or even something as simple as how unlikely it would be for us to discover wholly articulated skeletons if the bodies had just died where they were and then abandoned (thanks to scavengers, weathering, etc.). Again, we can’t know what was in their minds, but it leaves little doubt that they saw something in the bod that was special to them.

At the very end, Sykes broadens her focus to the recent findings that most of us have inherited up to four percent of our DMA from Neanderthals, meaning that there was interbreeding going on, as well as with the newest “ghost population” discovered, the Denisovans. She also briefly covers what might be some of the effects handed down by those shared genes and then looks at the ethical concerns over experiments involving splicing of Neanderthal DNA into mice or “projects building Neander-oids: small clumps of gene-edited human brain cells . . . capable of internal electrical connections,” which she says means we’re “inching forwards on an undirected trajectory towards self-aware Neander-brains.” What could go wrong?

Kindred is a top-notch non-fiction book. Sykes is always clear, methodical and organized; fills the book with incredibly fascinating details that are as up to date as one can get in a book, knows how to make good use of a comprehension-enhancing metaphor, dramatization or representative concrete example, and even tosses in a nicely lyrical passage here and there amidst the hard science. She’s also very careful to note the difference between evidence-based conclusion, theory, and true speculation. I had only two quibbles, both of which were minor. Each chapter begins with a more narrative-form vignette where sometimes I’d say the language gets pushed a bit too far into the purple spectrum. And I’d also argue that in a few places her enthusiasm for her topic leads her to go into a wealth of super-fine details that will probably cause some/many of her non-scientist readers to glaze over temporarily (but only temporarily) as when she dives into the nuanced differences in stone tools. That said, minor as I find them, one’s mileage may vary—some may absolutely love those opening passages and eagerly lap up that voluminous detail.

One of my favorite lines in Kindred is when Sykes notes that the scent of knapping (making stone tools via flaking) is “exactly how astronauts described the smell of moon dust.” That’s a brilliant choice of comparison, moving from a Neanderthal 300, 000 years ago stooped over a chunk of rock and chipping away usable flakes to Neil Armstrong stepping out on the surface of the moon. If that doesn’t grab your sense of wonder and shake it by the tail, I don’t know what will. Highly recommended.

I have always believed many of us had Neanderthal heritage stashed away in out dna! My teachers, years ago, ridiculed those of us who believed it to be true! Well, live long enough! We were proven correct after all! Not only that- but we always knew to be true that they really that much different from modern humans. Thank you, Ms. Sykes! I enjoyed your book very much.

This is a very comprehensive book of all things Neanderthal. Wragg Sykes does a great job compiling extensive datasets; however, it is so comprehensive that it is somewhat clunky. I wouldn't let that discourage anyone from reading it, because the takeaway points are worth it. As an anthropologist, some of the things that I learned in this book have given me a different perspective on Neanderthals and what it means to be human. If you are a physical anthropologist or archaeologist (or aspiring to be one), you will want a copy of this on your shelves. This book would also make an excellent supplemental course adoption in upper-level undergraduate and graduate classes.

Thanks to the publisher, Bloomsbury USA, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

Interesting but far too detailed

I found the book disappointing. Although the writing is conversational and in plain English, I felt that the information on archeological sites was too detailed and too extensive to keep my attention. On the other hand, I enjoyed the introduction to each paragraph, finding them poetic, but this wasn’t enough to make the book enjoyable.
Disclosure: I received an advance reader copy via Netgalley for review purposes.

An impressive work, collecting the most up-to-date facts about our most famous fellow hominid. The span of this book is enormous, covering every possible aspect of the Neanderthal's lifestyle. Describing many discoveries, Sykes is also painting an interesting history of paleontology and scientific progress.

The book is very detailed, sometimes to a fault - a whole chapter about different methods of making stone tools was somewhat exhausting. Sykes sometimes is taking an astonishing leap of faith, trying to imagine the inner life of so long gone beings. She is disarmingly biased towards her subjects of study but after over a century of slander, I suppose the Neanderthal deserves to have such a valiant advocate.

Thanks to the publisher, Bloomsbury USA, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

All my life I’ve pictured Neanderthals as apelike troglodytes who dragged their knuckles while losing ground to the smarter Homo Sapiens. Turns out I was wrong! Kindred explains how they were an advanced society with structured living arrangements, complex relationships and even art. The improvements in genetic science and dating techniques are now allowing us to learn more about our ancestors. Much is still unknown, but the author has the expertise to make educated guesses. Her theories about why they went extinct make sense and her descriptions of what must have been their daily lives are so vivid that it’s hard to remember they died off so long ago. Some parts were too technical for me, especially the genetics and the geological data. The chapters devoted to their society and, most of all, their art, were my favorite. This is a great way to learn about a time period that is still unfamiliar.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/Bloomsbury Sigma!

Thoroughly researched book. I appreciated very much the abundant level of detail given by the author without loosing reader's interest. It was fascinating to learn from Neaderthals and all insights latest research has provided.
I especially appreciated that the reference to scientific word were not presented as in most academic journal, since it would have taken away from the enjoyment of the narrative. The introduction to each chapter was fantastic as well.

PDF : je suis malheureusement incapable de lire ce format. Ça me vexe car ce livre avait l'air vraiment bien.

Vibrant, poetic and lyrical. The author entertains as well as informs. The science is interesting, not overbearing, and the profound examination of what it means to study human ancestors in the context of deep time provokes more than one "wow" moment throughout. A thoughtful, careful and deserved portrait of a subject misunderstood and mocked in the past. A window on how science can answer fundamental questions of both an academic and philosophical nature.

I found Kindred interesting as someone already interested in (and familiar with) the relevant anthropology and archaeology, but wonder if someone less invested might be somewhat lost. I wanted more of the parts of the book that delved deeply into the current state of scientific knowledge about the Neanderthals (and their relationship with Sapiens) and the implications of that knowledge, and less of the parts of the book that were more creative writing or poetic prose than popular science – but those parts might be someone else's favorite parts; they just didn't work as well for me as I wanted them to.

According to her own website, Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes is an archaeologist, writer and “creative professional”, with an especial interest in the ancient world of the Palaeolithic, and whose doctoral thesis was the first synthesis of evidence for late Neanderthals in Britain. With such impressive credentials, stated interests in creative writing and the highlighting of women in earth sciences, it's not a surprise that I found Kindred to be such an impressive read; Wragg Sykes not only relates the entire history of Neanderthal research, but in engaging prose, she explains why the story of these hominid cousins should matter to us humans today. From the Victorian spelunkers whose discoveries shook their cosy worldviews to the precision data revealed in modern laboratories, the history of Neanderthal research is a fascinating one; and with evocative and empathetic storytelling, Wragg Sykes reanimates these long-forgotten ancestors. Kindred is an engrossing story, told well.