In this deeply researched 'twenty-first-century portrait of the Neanderthals' from birth to burial and beyond, palaeolithic archaeologist Rebecca Wragg Sykes smashes stereotypes.

... intriguing.

In her book Kindred Rebecca Wragg Sykes aims to tell a complete new story about Neanderthals. She has done a remarkable job synthesizing thousands of academic studies into a single accessible narrative. From her pages emerge new Neanderthals that are very different from the cartoon figures of old. Kindred is important reading not just for anyone interested in these ancient cousins of ours, but also for anyone interested in humanity..

... it seems we got Neanderthals all wrong. Rebecca Wragg Sykes’s fact-packed but highly readable book puts us right with a superbly authoritative guided tour of much new evidence.

If your ancestry traces back to populations outside sub-Saharan Africa, there's a good chance that your genome includes contributions from Neanderthals. In Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, archaeologist and science writer Rebecca Wragg Sykes explains in splendidly engaging prose why this fact is cause for wonder and celebration.

Rebecca Wragg Sykes nevertheless brings something new to this discussion.

Wragg Sykes separates perfectly valid and reasonable questions...from the thinking that casts our ancient relatives as 'dullard losers on a withered branch of the family tree'.

Deeply involved in these studies herself, Rebecca Wragg Sykes has performed something extraordinary in distilling them into a commanding and wonderfully readable account. Her success is in leaving us with glimpses of real scenes, of imagined individuals and groups going about their daily lives.

Accumulated from the approximately 200 known Neanderthal sites, the information that Sykes evocatively and enthusiastically presents enables readers to appreciate Neanderthals as sentient creatures, and possibly imagine themselves sharing, Jean Auel–like, a Pleistocene encounter with them. Every library needs its science up to date; Sykes delivers..

Wragg Sykes has made a career studying Neanderthals, and she skillfully lays out a massive amount of information, much of which has turned up over the past few decades.

... [a] fine debut.