The Neandertals: Of Skeletons, Scientists, and Scandal
by Erik Trinkaus, Pat Shipman
On This Page
Description
In 1856, at the very time when Charles Darwin was writing The Origin of Species, which would popularize the revolutionary concept of evolution worldwide, the fossilized remains of a stocky, powerful, human-like creature were discovered in a German valley called Neandertal. The bones were believed by some scientists to have belonged to a primitive version of modern man. But how old were they? Thus began a controversy that has continued to this day, swirling around the origins and show more interpretation of the Neandertals, placing them at every possible location on our family tree. Now, Erik Trinkaus, one of the world's leading experts on Neandertals, has collaborated with the noted scientist and writer Pat Shipman on a sweeping and definitive examination of what we know and how we've come to know it. Neandertals, who clearly represent a phase of human evolution, possessed their own unique qualities that made them neither chimpanzee nor modern human. The nature of those qualities - and how Neandertals were discovered, debated, studied, and analyzed over the years - is presented with authority and anecdotal richness. The story ranges from the days of Georges Cuvier (known as "Magician of the Charnel House" for his ability to reconstruct from piles of bones a whole animal skeleton) to the latest researchers whose work with DNA has raised the possibility that we are all descended from one African woman (the "Eve" theory). The controversy carries over from the elite scientific societies of Victorian England and nineteenth-century universities in France and Germany to American laboratories. Along the way there are anthropologists painfully accumulating specimens in digs as distant as Belgium and South Africa, Java and the hills outside Beijing, gradually building up a substantial base for legitimate theorizing (illegitimate, too - the tale of the Piltdown hoax is an enlightening interlude). A contentious, combative saga unfolds of vested interests and accepted wisdom clashing with empirical evidence and informal guesses, for as the authors make clear, no one has ever found it easy to be objective about Neandertals. Opinions have veered wildly over time: Neandertals were hardly human, almost apes; they were human, but pathological and not ancient; they were cannibals and shuffling, depraved half-wits; they were indistinguishable (given a shave and a haircut) from your next-door neighbor; they were an evolutionary dead end. In short, they were what we wanted them to be. The Neandertals is an important contribution both to the literature of prehistory and to our understanding of the way subjective wishes and irrelevant moral assumptions can distort even the most serious scientific endeavors. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
Members
- Recently Added By
Author Information
8 Works 180 Members
16 Works 1,483 Members
Pat Shipman is retired Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at Pennsylvania State University. She is the coauthor of The Ape in the Tree: An Intellectual and Natural history of Proconsul (Harvard).
Awards and Honors
Awards
Common Knowledge
- Original title
- The Neandertals : changing the image of mankind
- Alternate titles
- The Neandertals : of skeletons, scientists, and scandal (paperback reprint) (paperback reprint)
- Original publication date
- 1993
- People/Characters
- Camille Arambourg; Baruch Arensburg; Ofer Bar-Yosef; Alberto Carlo Blanc; Marcellin Boule; Amedee Bouyssonie (show all 57); Jean Bouyssonie; C. Loring Brace; George Busk; A. J. E. Cave; Edmund S. Crelin; Marcel de Puydt; Eduoard Dupont; Hugh Falconer; Charles Fraipont; Julien Fraipont; Johann Carl Fuhlrott; Dragutin Gorjanovic-Kramberger; Otto Hauser; Jean-Louis Heim; F. Clark Howell; Ales Hrdlicka; Jean-Jacques Hublin; Arthur Keith; William King; Hermann Klaatsch; Edouard Lartet; Louis Lartet; Arlette Leroi-Gourhan; Francois Leveque; Phillip Lieberman; Marie Joseph Maximin Lohest; George Grant MacCurdy; Karel Maska; Theodore D. McCown; Jonathan Musgrave; Stjepan Osterman; Etienne Patte; Denis Peyrony; Yoel Rak; Karen Rosenberg; Hermann Schaafhausen; Phillipe-Charles Schmerling; Gustav Schwalbe; Sergio Sergi; Fred Smith; Ralph Solecki; T. Dale Stewart; William Straus, Jr.; Christopher Stringer; Anne-Marie Tillier; Paul Topinard; Erik Trankaus; Henri Vallois; Bernard Vandermeersch; Virchow, Rudolf Ludwig Carl, 1821-1902; Allan Wilson
- Important places
- Neandertal, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany; Kebara Cave, Wadi Kebara, Israel; Grotto Guattari, Monte Circeo, San Felice Circeo, Lazio, Italy; San Felice Circeo, Lazio, Italy; Spy, Namur, Belgium; Engis, Liège, Belgium
- Dedication
- To Kim and Alan
Zachary and Amelia
Sable and Chutney:
thanks - First words
- This is a book about the history of science and the science of history. (Authors' note)
Serendipity played the joker that August day in 1856. (Prologue)
The original Neandertal fossils burst onto an unsuspecting world. (Chapter 1) - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)They were themselves; there were Neandertals--one of the more distinctive, successful, and intriguing groups of humans that ever enriched our family history.
- Publisher's editor
- Segal, Jonathan
- Blurbers
- Leakey, Richard; Pilbeam, David; Lewin, Roger; Stringer, Christopher; Johanson, Donald C.
Classifications
- Genres
- Anthropology, Science & Nature, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, History
- DDC/MDS
- 573.3 — Natural sciences & mathematics Biology Specific physiological systems in animals, regional histology and physiology in animals Antiquity of man
- LCC
- GN285 .T73 — Geography, Anthropology and Recreation Anthropology Anthropology Physical anthropology. Somatology Human evolution Fossil man. Human paleontology
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 156
- Popularity
- 209,474
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (4.00)
- Languages
- English, French, German
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 8
