The Neandertals: Changing the Image of Mankind

Once mistakenly characterized as brutally apish creatures thought to walk with bent knees, the robust, muscular Neandertals, who lived between 100,000 and 35,000 years ago, are now considered pre-modern humans and possibly our ancestors. Neandertals buried their dead in graves, made body ornaments and had strong social ties. This exciting history follows the discovery and interpretation of Neandertal remains from the unearthing of the first skeleton in the Neander Valley, Germany, in 1856 to modern DNA studies. Rudolf Virchow, father of modern pathology, who rejected the idea of human evolution, dismissed the Neandertal remains as both pathological and recent, but a wealth of fossil finds proved him wrong. The authors assert that modern humans may have evolved from the same parent stock as Neandertals. Trinkaus is a University of New Mexico anthropologist, Shipman a Johns Hopkins professor of medicine. Illustrated. (Jan.)