Neandertals: Changing the Image of Mankind - Softcover

"An important book... remarkably complete. For anyone interested in the subject of human origins, seldom has it been possible to find out so much between the covers of a popular work." (Richard Leakey)

"A masterful combination of careful scholarship and clever narrative... authoritative and delightful to read." (Roger Lewin)

"Wonderful reading, bringing vivacity to dusty boneyards... Impossible to put down." (Jonathan Kingdom The Times Literary Supplement)

In 1856 - just as Darwin was completing ORIGIN OF SPECIES - the fossilized remains of a stocky, powerful human-like creature were discovered in a cave in the Neander Valley in Germany. Opinions about Neandertal Man have veered wildly ever since: he was not human at all, but closer to ape, he was human but not ancient; he was a cannibal, a shuffling, depraved halfwit; an evolutionary dead-end, wiped out by more efficient and intelligent Cro-Magnons. The controversy continues to this day. Erik Trinkaus - the world's leading authority on Neandertals - and anthropologist Pat Shipman vividly tell the whole story, from the discovery of the bones to the latest research. Theirs is a brilliant first-hand account of the search for man's beginnings and out of a particular man - dead for 40, 000 years - who began a revolution that changed the world.