The Neanderthal's Necklace: In Search of the First Thinkers - Hardcover

Arsuaga, Juan Luis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0470851570 ISBN 13: 9780470851579

Publisher: Wiley, 2003

Synopsis

The Neanderthals were members of a parallel humanity that evolved in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years. They manufactured stone tools like the Cro-Magnons, the modern humans - with whom they were in direct competition for thousands of years - and they used language. They were human not only because of their place in our evolutionary group but also in the spiritual nature of their beliefs and in their emotions, in their very human minds. The way they lived and the reasons they disappeared fifty thousand years ago offer a surprising mirror in which we can examine and learn more about our no-so-alien lives.

In The Neanderthal's Necklace, Juan Luis Arsuaga - Europe's most celebrated paleoanthropologist - displays not only his well-known scientific acuity but also his talents as an engaging teacher and storyteller, giving us a concise and readable description of what we know about who we are and how we came to be so.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Has there ever been a life form on earth that was as conscious of its own existence as ours? Quite possibly.

The Neanderthals occupied the earth for around 100,000 years and co-existed with our ancestors for at least 10,000 years. Their intelligence was probably very close to our own. They were able to manufacture stone tools like the Cro-Magnons, our ancestors, and they used language, hunted, socialised and practised funerary rituals. Additionally, they were physically better adapted than our ancestors for a cold climate.

Yet the Neanderthals died out while our ancestors survived. Juan Luis Arsuaga suggests that our ancestors’ ability to use symbols combined with their dexterity with tools, such as sewing implements, may have helped them to survive.

This is a story of the sweeping landscapes of a young Earth, of mountains and lakes and of the Ice Age. Within this vista, a drama is being played out between two species. Both are intelligent, conscious and part of reasonably sophisticated communities - only one will survive.

This is a book about our origins and where we came from.

From the Back Cover:

"A lively and very personal account of the earliest inhabitants of Europe by the continent’s leading palaeoanthropologist and hominid fossil finder. Arsuaga’s viewpoint comes as a refreshing and instructive contrast to much of the English language literature on the Neanderthals and their relatives. This book should be read by anyone interested in their own origins and our extinct relatives."
—Dr Ian Tattersall, Curator in the Department of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History and author of The Fossil Trail and The Last Neanderthal.

"As an internationally renowned professor of human palaeontology . . . [Arsuaga] certainly knows his stuff, so we get the necessary evolutionary and environmental background to this complex story, all well-told for the general reader."
—New Scientist

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0470851570
• ISBN 13: 9780470851579
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 356