Review of reviews: Books

thals also found and made pigments, which they applied to shells in perhaps purely decorative ways. In one of the book’s most engaging chapters, the author explores how Neanderthals experienced grief, and argues that cannibalism might have been an expression of love. That’s quite a “mindexpanding” idea.

Wragg Sykes also cautions against asking the wrong questions, said Simon Ings in New Scientist. Too often we have focused on how Neanderthals might have been like us rather than accepting the limits of what we can know about them. But we should still appreciate it when the evidence shows us that our species is not so singular in its capabilities. Humility might benefit us, too, in the near future, because the Neanderthals’ extinction 44,000 years ago—after a healthy 400,000-year run— appears partly tied to dramatic shifts in climate like those humans face in this century. What’s more, Neanderthals never completely vanished; every living human harbors traces of DNA from the species. “Neanderthals were part of our family,” and to this day, “we carry some part of them inside us.”