Illustrated by Alison Atkin and Marc Dando
390 pages
Published 2020
Read from November 5 to November 10
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
When I got my BA in Anthropology, way back in the late ’00s, the consensus on Neanderthals was that they were an over-specialized branch of hominin evolution, hyper-carnivores eking a meager living on the edge of the habitable world, oddly stagnant in culture across deep reaches of time, dead without descendants. They may have buried their dead, took care of their disabled cohorts, and utilized mineral pigments, but otherwise seemed to demonstrate no conception of art. It was deemed unlikely that they could make complex and varied vocal sounds. Neanderthals were depicted as a tragic curiosity, offering insight into adaptation and extinction—fellow travelers crowded out by our own species or starved by the loss of habitat.
The beautiful thing about science is that we’re always learning more, and adapting what we think we know to adjust to new information. Thanks to genetic sequencing, we know H. sapiens interbred with Neanderthals (and other related populations). We’ve found evidence of rudimentary sculpture and even construction. Neanderthals lived in and adapted to a broad diversity of environments. They also seem to have engaged in some measure of cannibalism as mortuary ritual. It’s a more nuanced picture by far.
Of course, the very dynamism of science means that this book, a mere five years out of date, might not be worth reading for all I know. Still, Kindred is one of the few science books in my library, and five years out of date is better than my education, which is approaching twenty years old.
Sykes, like so many scientists turned pop-sci writers before her, produces a readable but often uninspired text that feels like she tried too hard to keep her wording casual. It’s a style choice that strikes me as condescending. Each chapter begins with a sensory immersion sequence in italics, which can sometimes still be fun, but here just feels awkward. She also tries to slip in the occasional poetic flourish, which falls flat more often than not.
That said, I love science, I miss studying human evolution and prehistory, and this book is a perfectly adequate refresher. Once it gets past the de rigueur background information, Kindred offers fascinating and detailed looks at everything from Neanderthals’ health and injuries, to granular examinations of the climates and environments they experienced, to extensive inventories of their varied foodways. From there, it sketches more speculative pictures of Neanderthal aesthetics and emotions. It’s a solid pop primer, so far as I can tell with my outdated background. It also offers a gratifying amount of depth that these treatments rarely provide.
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