The Neandertals: Of Skeletons, Scientists, and Scandal

by Erik Trinkaus, Pat Shipman

Overview

To one nineteenth-century scholar, their fierce, ridged brows were evidence of a "moral darkness" that set them irrevocably apart from human beings. Some commentators accused them of cannibalism. Yet by the 1970s the Neandertals were being hailed as "the first flower people" and praised for their apparent compassion and religious piety.

The story of how scientists could come to such divergent conclusions about a set of bones unearthed in Germany in 1856 unfolds with irresistible detail in this enthralling book. Even as The Neandertals assesses the identity, kinship, and character of our possible ancestors, it casts a wry eye on the modern Homo sapiens who have embraced or disavowed them and illuminates the peculiar way in which even science is shaped by human needs and biases.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679732990
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/15/1994
Edition description:	1st Vintage Books ed
Pages:	454
Product dimensions:	5.24(w) x 7.98(h) x 1.01(d)

Editorial Reviews

Once mistakenly characterized as brutally apish creatures thought to walk with bent knees, the robust, muscular Neandertals, who lived between 100,000 and 35,000 years ago, are now considered pre-modern humans and possibly our ancestors. Neandertals buried their dead in graves, made body ornaments and had strong social ties. This exciting history follows the discovery and interpretation of Neandertal remains from the unearthing of the first skeleton in the Neander Valley, Germany, in 1856 to modern DNA studies. Rudolf Virchow, father of modern pathology, who rejected the idea of human evolution, dismissed the Neandertal remains as both pathological and recent, but a wealth of fossil finds proved him wrong. The authors assert that modern humans may have evolved from the same parent stock as Neandertals. Trinkaus is a University of New Mexico anthropologist, Shipman a Johns Hopkins professor of medicine. Illustrated. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Trinkaus, a leading Neandertal scholar from the University of New Mexico, has teamed with Shipman (medicine, Johns Hopkins) to produce a fascinating account of the discovery and interpretation of Neandertal fossils from the first find in 1856 to the present. By focusing on the men and women involved in the ongoing effort to understand how Neandertals lived, the authors show that personalities and prevailing social attitudes played as large a role as the fossils themselves in our coming to terms with these enigmatic ancestors. As the authors eloquently put it, ``Infuriatingly, the fossils do not speak for themselves. It is the examining scientists who bring them to life, often endowing them with their own best or worst characteristics.'' In bringing this book to life, Trinkaus and Shipman have endowed it with healthy doses of humanity and wisdom. Essential for all history of science and human prehistory collections.-- Eric Hinsdale, Trinity Univ. Lib., San Antonio

Library Journal

Fine scientific history, as Neandertal specialist Trinkaus (Anthropology/Univ. of New Mexico) and educator Shipman (The Johns Hopkins Univ. School of Medicine) trace our understanding of Neandertals and their role in human evolution. The story (hyperbolized as "a revolution that would change the world") begins in August 1856, when a workman uncovers some odd bones in a limestone cave in Germany. Immediately, the importance of the find is recognized: These are human remains of a type hitherto unknown, perhaps unlocking the secrets of our past. For the next century and a half, tempers, reputations, even religious beliefs would rise and fall on the basis of these bones. Trinkaus and Shipman concentrate on the scientific squabbles that ensued; although they personalize key figures (Darwin is nicely described as "a plodding, uncertain little man who got hold of an idea too big for him"), the emphasis is on how research into Neandertal played a part in resolving the puzzles of evolution. The book doubles as a history of evolutionary science, with ample coverage devoted to the Wallace-Darwin priority issue, the Wilberforce-Huxley debates, and many other episodes irrelevant to Neandertal in the narrow sense. Trinkaus and Shipman don't scrimp, however, when it comes to Neandertal: This is a complex, thorough history, covering everything from the "deluxe, special-edition" Piltdown Man hoax to the watershed 1939 Monte Circeo find that transformed Neandertal's image from subhuman brute to sensitive, religious being. Often, such turnabouts were governed by national rivalries or personal jealousies; a persistent subtext here is the social basis of scientific argument. How do things stand nowfor our beetle-browed relatives? On the issue of relation to Homo sapiens, the authors find that Neandertals are "delimited biologically as a distinct group of humans"; they also aver, on admittedly sketchy evidence, that Neandertal had the same "behavioral capabilities" as modern folk. Easily the best book on the subject. (Seventy-five illustrations—five seen.)

Kirkus Reviews