Kindred is the definitive guide to the Neanderthals. Since their discovery more than 160 years ago, Neanderthals have metamorphosed from the losers of the human family tree to A-list hominins.

Rebecca Wragg Sykes uses her experience at the cutting-edge of Palaeolithic research to share our new understanding of Neanderthals, shoving aside clichés of rag-clad brutes in an icy wasteland. She reveals them to be curious, clever connoisseurs of their world, technologically inventive and ecologically adaptable. Above all, they were successful survivors for more than 300,000 years, during times of massive climatic upheaval.

Much of what defines us was also in Neanderthals, and their DNA is still inside us. Planning, co-operation, altruism, craftsmanship, aesthetic sense, imagination, perhaps even a desire for transcendence beyond mortality. Kindred does for Neanderthals what Sapiens did for us, revealing a deeper, more nuanced story where humanity itself is our ancient, shared inheritance.

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Rebecca Wragg Sykes has been fascinated by the vanished worlds of the Pleistocene ice ages
since childhood, and followed this interest through a career researching the most enigmatic
characters of all, the Neanderthals. After a PhD on the last Neanderthals living in Britain, she
worked in France at the world-famous PACEA laboratory, Université de Bordeaux, on topics
ranging from Neanderthal landscapes and territories in the Massif Central region of south-east
France to examining how they were the first ancient humans to produce a synthetic material and
tools made of multiple parts. Rebecca is an Honorary Fellow at the School of Archaeology,
Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool. She regularly writes for the popular
media, including the Scientific American and Guardian science blogs. She is also co-founder of
the influential Trowelblazers project, which highlights women archaeologists, paleontologists
and geologists through innovative outreach and collaboration.

Julie Lawrence is a paleoanthropologist and historian of science currently based at Harvard
University’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. Her work largely focuses on the
evolution of the human face—from changes four million years ago in the teeth and faces of our
first upright ancestors to understanding the diversity of facial forms today. With her expertise in
3D imaging and analysis, as well as broad experience examining ancient, fossil, and modern
skeletons, Julie explores how evolution, growth, and behavior has shaped the way we look.

For more information and videos of Harvard Science Book Talks, see https://science.fas.harvard.edu/book-talks.