Neanderthal

Rating:
Summary: An outstanding, informative and up-to-date survey.
Review: In Neanderthal: Neanderthal Man And The Story Of Human Origins , Paul Jordan draws upon his archaeological expertise to bring the reader up to date on our current understandings and interpretations of the Neanderthal species and its relationship to homo sapiens. Recently genetic testing on original bones from Germany show that the Neanderthal are not our direct ancestors, but rather a hominid off-shoot from a common ancestor shared with homo sapiens, having diverged from our line of evolution at least half a million years ago and doomed to die out during the last ice age. Jordan also surveys the evidence of about five thousand years of overlapping co-existence with homo sapiens, and some archaeological signs of interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthal types. Neanderthal brings together under one cover all the research into the Neanderthal, their world, technology, way of life, death rituals, origins, and relationships to modern man. Ideal for the non-specialist general reader, Neanderthal is enhanced with more than one hundred black and white illustrations and eight pages of color photography. Also highly recommended are Paul Jordan's early works: Early Man; Riddles Of The Sphinx; and Ancestral Images: The Iconography Of Human Origins.

Rating:
Summary: Heavy on the Fact of Human Evolution, But Not Well Written
Review: Paul Jordan provides a lot of detail as far as comparative anatomy and the location of various discoveries. He, essentially, has his facts straight and, at times, provides the reader with interesting insights and a discussion of the issues. But the book "Neanderthal" is not well organized and his style of writing leaves much to be desired. His very last chapter, the "epilogue," is the only one in the book where a readable style is apparent. Consequently, I would view this more as a reference work as it is not enjoyable reading. There are many pictures of skulls but almost none have explanitory notes as to what we should be looking for. One is left searching through text to try to make them useful. A few explanatory charts or graphs would have been helpful to try to make sense out of the wealth of factual material he presents. And his discussion of the "Out of Africa" vs "Multi-Regional" hypothesis is strewn all over the book and difficult to come to grips with for those uninitiated. His discussions of DNA testing etc can be mind numbing.

All in all, I wanted to give this book three stars, but I had to relent and give it four due to its discussion of many of the important issues of human evolution and its wealth of detail. Oh, and also, if you are looking for something specific to Neanderthals...less than half this book deals with them. You can do better on Neanderthals with other authors.

Rating:
Summary: kissing cousins
Review: Paul Jordan writes about our close evolutionary cousins in a readable style which is honest and informative without the unfortunate trend by some popular writers on human origins to dumb-it-down. The Neanderthals (FYI pronounced Ny-And-Er-Tals) are presented as a complex and successful (for their time) relative of homo sapiens sapiens, enigmatically similar and yet quite different in many respects. Hardly the dumb, uncaring brutes of popular culture. The book contains detailed, but readable, explanations of the fossil record for (sometimes competing) theories about Neanderthal society, tool making and physiology. Jordan's great strength is his ability to produce a readable narrative while not shying away from admitting the ambiguities that exist. This is Science at its best - a complex and exciting puzzle honestly expounded. My only complaint is the lack of diagrams of time lines showing ice ages and contemporaneous fossil evidence and something of the evolutionary bush (albeit conjectured) of human and near human species.

Rating:
Summary: kissing cousins
Review: Paul Jordan writes about our closest cousins in a style which is highly informative without the recent trend by some popular writers on human origins to dumb-it-down. The Neanderthals (FYI pronounced Ny-And-Er-Tals) are presented as a complex and successful (for their time) relative of homo sapiens sapiens, enigmatically similar and yet quite different in many respects. Hardly the dumb, uncaring brutes of popular culture. The book contains detailed, but readable, explanations of the fossil record for (sometimes competing) theories about Neanderthal society, tool making and physiology. Jordan's great strength is his ability to produce a readable narrative while not shying away from admitting the ambiguities that exist. This is Science at its best - a complex and exciting puzzle honestly expounded. My only complaint is the lack of diagrams of time lines showing ice ages and contemporaneous fossil evidence and something of the evolutionary bush (albeit conjectured) of human and near human species.

Rating:
Summary: Heavy on the Fact of Human Evolution, But Not Well Written
Review: This book has it all, from fossils to DNA tests. Paul Jordan knows his stuff and has the facts all at his finger tips as he takes us on a tour of the world of the Neanderthals AND the history of their discovery. The only complaint I can say is that it is a tad disorganized in format and might confuse people new to the subject. Lots of photos, but few charts or timelines to help the readers.

People just beginning might wish to read IN SEARCH OF THE NEANDERTHALS by Christopher Stringer and Clive Gamble. Being published in the 1993-4, it is already outdated, but most of the basic information on fossils, camp sites, food sources and stone tools are still valid, aided with maps, charts and timelines. THAN come to Paul Jordan's book for the updated data and ideas.

Rating:
Summary: A updated book about Neanderthals...
Review: This book has it all, from fossils to DNA tests. Paul Jordan knows his stuff and has the facts all at his finger tips as he takes us on a tour of the world of the Neanderthals AND the history of their discovery. The only complaint I can say is that it is a tad disorganized in format and might confuse people new to the subject. Lots of photos, but few charts or timelines to help the readers.

People just beginning might wish to read IN SEARCH OF THE NEANDERTHALS by Christopher Stringer and Clive Gamble. Being published in the 1993-4, it is already outdated, but most of the basic information on fossils, camp sites, food sources and stone tools are still valid, aided with maps, charts and timelines. THAN come to Paul Jordan's book for the updated data and ideas.

Rating:
Summary: Best coverage of Neanderthal
Review: This book, as the title suggests, concentrates on Neanderthal finds, fossils, and tool-making, and it goes into a great deal of detail on the current state of our knowledge. In fact, I would say it's probably the most thorough discussion I've found of all the important Neanderthal finds, along with the many intermediate fossil discoveries that show the evolutionary progression of the Neanderthal line.

These include finds such as the Spanish Sima de los Huesos fossils, and the Greek Petrolona fossils, both of which strongly seem to represent an early, archaic form of Neanderthal in their heavier brow-ridges and smaller (about 1200 cc) braincases. Along with these, there are discussions of the several classic Neanderthal finds from France and Germany, too. As I mentioned, the author goes into a fair amount of anatomical detail discussing and comparing the fossils from the many different sites, and so this book may be somewhat difficult, dry, and technical for the non-specialist. Overall, however, it's a very thorough and detailed discussion of the state of our knowledge about this important homonid. The average reader, however, may find the author's prose a little turgid, and the overall technical level a little rough going, but in general, I can't fault the writing too much given the level of technical difficulty of the book.

In addition to the comparative anatomy, the author also discusses Neanderthal tool-making and cultural artifacts, such as the Mousterian industry, and others.

Given the difficulty of the book, I would recommend that many people read Richard Klein's The Dawn of Human Culture before tackling this book, unless you're already somewhat knowledgeable about human evolution. This is a more accessible and very readable book that discusses all the early pre-homonids and homonids from Ardipethicus ramidus up to Homo sapiens, giving much more equal weight to the different stages in human evolution. It will give you a better perspective on the entire line of human evolution before reading Jordan's more specialized volume, which heavily emphasizes Neanderthal. Jordan does provide later chapters discussing earlier and later fossils, so eventually he places Neanderthal in the context of the other homonids, but you don't find these until about half-way through the book.

Another nice point about Klein's book is the interesting discussion of high-tech dating methods and how they're being used, such as radio-isotope methods, luminescence dating, ESR or electron spin resonance techniques, and so on. Klein is also careful to discuss the pros and cons of each dating method, and what the difficulties are in using each method.

Overall, Jordan's book is an excellent, thorough, and fairly technical discussion of the subject which is worth reading despite being somewhat tough going for many readers.