Neandertals: Changing the Image of Mankind

by Pat Shipman (Author), Erik Trinkaus (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1994

  $5.81

  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.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1993

  $3.25

  In 1856, the disovery of the remains of Neandertal Man in a Swiss mountain valley forced scientists to face what Thomas Huxley called The question of questions . What precisely was man's ancestry? Coming just as Darwin published Origin of Species , Neandertal Man instantly became the focus of controversy and has remained so, in various ways, ever since. This book tells the whole story, from the religious crisis of the 1860s and its debate over ape-ancestors to recent arguments about the nature of prehistoric man (was he a peacable flower child or a brutish hunter?) and attempts to recover DNA samples from blood traces found on a Neandertal stone axe. Along the way we meet dozens of fascinating characters-archaeologists, charlatans, philosophers and scientists of every stripe.