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The Neanderthal's Necklace
The Neanderthal's Necklace is an engrossing and informative introduction to the Neanderthals, setting them in the context of human evolution and prehistory more generally, and of broader ecological and environmental history. In it Luis Arsuaga touches on anatomy, demographics, systematics, evolutionary psychology, philosophy of mind, and more, but he does so sensibly, not trying to cram in too much and not getting distracted from his basic subject. He does focus on Spain and to a lesser extent on his own digs - he is one of Europe's leading paleoanthropologists - but while his passion for his subject is clear, The Neanderthal's Necklace never becomes autobiographical.
The first two chapters are an account of early human prehistory: the other apes, the various species of Australopithecus and Homo, early toolmaking, and so forth. This includes a brief introduction to systematics. Chapter three continues this with an account of the evolution of the Neanderthals in Europe and our ancestors in Africa, and an overview of their comparative anatomy and morphology.
Two chapters describe the environment in which this happened, presenting a history of the flora, fauna, geology and climate of Spain (and in less detail of Europe) over the last few hundred thousand years. Here Luis Arsuaga brings to life the mountains and forests of Spain, and the cave bears, mammoths, reindeer, and other animals that inhabited them. With bears and hibernation as the link, he goes on to consider the problem of finding enough to eat in this environment, especially in glacial periods. He looks at foraging and hunting (or scavenging) as sources of food, at the development of hunting technology, and at the extinction of many species. A chapter on demographics and life histories then explains how the archaeological record is used to estimate population densities, life expectancies, and so forth for both Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons.
Luis Arsuaga includes just a little bit of abstract philosophy of mind in an overview of debates over consciousness, sentience, language, and their evolutionary origins; he argues that Neanderthals had language and self-awareness, but lacked our more advanced symbolic abilities and vocal anatomy; evidence for "funerals" or other ritual behaviours is not conclusive. And he reconstructs the contact between Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon, with the latter's superior tools and social organisation giving them an edge in the last glaciation, and the last Neanderthals living in southern Spain. A brief final chapter recapitulates the story and glances at what came next, at agriculture and domestication.
Only a few rough sketches, graphs and maps are included in The Neanderthal's Necklace: a decent map of Spain is probably the major omission for non-Spanish readers. The publisher of this translation has, rather annoyingly, converted all the units from metric to Imperial, though the subject is surely scientific enough to warrant having left them. And a digression explaining the "grandmother" theory of menopause seems awkwardly "tacked on". Otherwise, there is not much to fault - this is a superb piece of popular science, one that does justice to its fascinating subject.
If you enjoyed this review, you might like to check out Danny's other paleoanthropology and popular science reviews. You can purchase The Neanderthal's Necklace from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
What really annoys me about most pre-history books and television shows is not the way that they assume, but the way they put forward their assumptions as facts. The way that in a show about dinosaurs, the narrator will casually throw in a bit about "the brightly coloured skin" or saying that Australopithecus slept in trees and had good colour vision.
I was under the impression that neanderthals were proven to be merely an extinct race of Homo Sapiens, but this book shows them as a different species again? Somebody explain plz
That has been debated! Scientists tend to be pigheaded about their pet theories and thus the subject of Homo Sapient/Neandertalis hybrids has become the cause of full blown trench warfare among scientists.
But enaugh about the bonfies of (scientific) vanity. Geneticists claim they have extracted Homo Sapiens Neandertalis DNA from fossils. Now..... some of the people who evaluated these results claim that interbreeding was impossible or at best extremely unlikely. Critics of this assertion point out that if Camels and Guanacos (30-40 million years of genetic isolation) can produce viable hybrid offspring the same should be the case with Homo Sapiens Sapiens and and Homo Sapiens Neandertalis where the Genetic isolation was much, much, smaller. This seems to be born out by evidence from Israel (debated) and especially new discoveries in Portugal . Some of the aversion to the possibility of Neandertal/Cromagnong hybrids seems to be almost Eugenic with some people which is probably due to the Neandertals undeserved reputation of being a primitive hominid when, at least in my humble opinion, they fully deserve the title "Sapiens". Personally I would not be at all disappointed to find I had some Neandertal DNA. There is a legion of worse possibilities when it comes to embarrasing ancestors than Neandertals. Feel free to make fun of me for saying that, I'm sure some of you can will not be able to resist it.
Ps. I am not an anthropologist and I may be misusing the term Homo Sapiens Sapiens, these hominids are also sometimes referred to as Homo Sapiens Cromagnon.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
One thing I try to point out is that the Bible should never be interpreted apart from its historic context, and evolution is the historic context of creation.
No data, no cry