In Search of the Neanderthals

Today Neanderthal specialists are locked in one of the fiercest debates in modern science. One side, the "multiregional" school, argues that the Neanderthals and their contemporaries elsewhere evolved semi-independently into modern humans. The other side, the "out of Africa" school, believes that the Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end, replaced by fully modern people coming ultimately from Africa. The latter camp, now gaining the upper hand, is led by Christopher Stringer. Here, in this long-awaited volume, he sets out his views for the first time, in conjunction with the archaeologist Clive Gamble. Step by step the authors put their case. The Neanderthals had an anatomy crucially different from our own, adapted to the cold of Ice Age Europe. Neanderthal behavior, captured in the archaeological record, similarly points to fundamental differences. New genetic evidence strongly suggests a single origin for modern humans in Africa.