Neanderthals

Step into Ice Age Europe and meet the closest relatives we ever had.

Neanderthals: The Extinct Cousins in Our Genome tells the story of a human species that thrived in Europe and western Asia for hundreds of thousands of years. Their fossils reveal powerful bodies, large brains, and adaptations that allowed them to endure bitter winters and dangerous landscapes. They built shelters, controlled fire, and hunted the giant beasts of the Ice Age, leaving behind tools and traces of a way of life that was both harsh and remarkable.

This book explores every part of Neanderthal life, from their emergence to the tools they shaped, the bodies that carried them through the Ice Age, and the social bonds that held their groups together. It asks the big questions that still surround them today - how close was their culture to ours, and how intelligent were they compared to Homo sapiens? Did they speak, sing, or share myths around the fire? When our ancestors arrived, did we fight them, live alongside them, or both?

This book includes black and white illustrations of fossils, fossil sites, tools, landscapes, extinct animals, and reconstructions of how Neanderthals may have looked in life. Their story ends with disappearance, one of the final extinctions in the human family, leaving the question of why these close cousins vanished while we survived. This fifth book in The Human Evolution Series continues the journey through our deep past, following the species that came closest to being us.