"Neanderthal" is a popular insult, meant to refer to stooped and club-wielding cave people who could hunt pretty well in their Ice Age habitats but were inferior in every way to our own early ancestors. Neanderthals "possess pop-cultural cachet like no other extinct human species," Wragg Sykes says, but too much of that cachet is constructed from stereotypes. In Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, archaeologist and science writer Rebecca Wragg Sykes explains in splendidly engaging prose why this fact is cause for wonder and celebration. If your ancestry traces back to populations outside sub-Saharan Africa, there's a good chance that your genome includes contributions from Neanderthals. Neandertals are ancient humans who sometimes mated with early Homo sapiens in Europe and Asia - then went extinct around 40,000 years ago. Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, Rebecca Wragg Sykes
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