How To Think Like a Neandertal

by Thomas Wynn, Frederick L. Coolidge

There have been many books, movies, and even TV commercials featuring Neandertals--some serious, some comical. But what was it really like to be a Neandertal? How were their lives similar to or different from ours?

In How to Think Like a Neandertal, archaeologist Thomas Wynn and psychologist Frederick L. Coolidge team up to provide a brilliant account of the mental life of Neandertals, drawing on the most recent fossil and archaeological remains. Indeed, some Neandertal remains are not fossilized, allowing scientists to recover samples of their genes--one specimen had the gene for red hair and, more provocatively, all had a gene called FOXP2, which is thought to be related to speech. Given the differences between their faces and ours, their voices probably sounded a bit different, and the range of consonants and vowels they could generate might have been different. But they could talk, and they had a large (perhaps huge) vocabulary--words for places, routes, techniques, individuals, and emotions. Extensive archaeological remains of stone tools and living sites (and, yes, they did often live in caves) indicate that Neandertals relied on complex technical procedures and spent most of their lives in
small family groups. The authors sift the evidence that Neandertals had a symbolic culture--looking at their treatment of corpses, the use of fire, and possible body coloring--and conclude that they probably did not have a sense of the supernatural. The book explores the brutal nature of their lives, especially in northwestern Europe, where men and women with spears hunted together for mammoths and wooly rhinoceroses. They were pain tolerant, very likely taciturn, and not easy to excite.

Wynn and Coolidge offer here an eye-opening portrait of Neandertals, painting a remarkable picture of these long-vanished people and providing insight, as they go along, into our own minds and culture.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, History, Anthropology, Archaeology, Psychology, Evolution

224 pages, Paperback

First published October 23, 2011

Reviews

[Iset · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to say this is one of the better non-fictions I’ve read about Neandertals in recent years (my other recommendation being The Neanderthals Rediscovered by Morse and Papagianni). Whilst it is not a revolutionary text – it does not tell us of new discoveries or sites, nor fundamentally reinterpret the evidence – it does serve an important purpose. It collates and collects what we know so far, and examines the whole to answer questions about Neandertal cognitive abilities; some of which have barely been mentioned in the academic literature before. How is this possible? Anyone who is passably familiar with archaeology knows that what people thought is one of the hardest things to us to get at, especially without writing – and even with writing, since the agenda of the writer, our capacity to lie, self-promote, bias, or just omit what we’re not interested in, all impact upon what is written. Indeed, we archaeologists are at our most cautious when attempting to infer thoughts. As a result, texts in the field do have a tendency to come off as rather dry reading. And yet, we’re not just interested in what happened – we want to know why it happened too, and understanding how a society or a specific person thought is often the most interesting aspect of history – it is that scientific rigour and our professional objectivity leads us to be deeply circumspect on the subject.

But I must confess a fondness for texts willing to delve into the topic, and not just because they get at potentially the most interesting part. Understanding thought processes is an important part of understanding a person or people as a whole. Actions that seem inexplicable to us become illuminated once we have a window on a different worldview – we ‘get the joke’; we become privy to the same insider information as the group being studied, and it becomes much easier to follow their peculiar lines of logic and motivation. Obviously this is incredibly valuable to historians. At the same time, such works often come under fire from criticisms of there being too many ‘probablys’ and ‘maybes’ in the text. True; some such postulations we currently do not know for sure, but I would maintain that such works are still of value. It is important to remember that ‘possibly’ does not mean either ‘likely’ or ‘unlikely’. Much work that has been derided in recent years as ‘just an idea’ is part of a fundamental misunderstanding on the part of the general public – these postulations are not just pulled out of their ass by experts, but the result of careful and rigorous, independently peer-reviewed evidence – so whilst a ‘probably’ does not tell us anything definitive, it is not a totally worthless proposition. Provided such texts are treated with the necessary comprehension by the reader – that the scenario is neither ‘for sure’ nor ‘baseless speculation’ – then I would argue that they do have value in bringing us closer to understanding our subject.

Wynn and Coolidge draw not just from archaeology here, but also cognition, psychology, and zoology, supporting their propositions with multiple layers of evidence. They readily admit the shortcomings in the text, and make it very clear that wherever there is uncertainty, they have erred on the most conservative interpretation of the facts. The result is quite palatable to this archaeologist; the authors appear to have engaged in self-critique, transparency about what they are doing, and have restrained themselves from wild leaps between evidence and conclusions. I would therefore credit it as a serious piece of work – and, I should add, yes they could have made the language and presentation more like an academic text, but personally I’ve never been one to mark down for a clear and accessible writing style with a general readership in mind, so long as the facts are given their due. In fact we could probably use more clarity in academic writing in general.

8 out of 10

[Claudia Putnam · Rating 3 out of 5]

UPDATE: As expected, a lot of the assumptions undergirding the hypotheses in this book, such as the use of hearths, can be tossed out now, thanks to the research summarized in Kindred.

Hard to rate... probably 3.5 stars. The writing is quite lively and it's probably not the authors' fault that they're skating on such thin ice--and it's nice that they're daring to do it. So the extra half-star is for the boldness, though I'm also not giving them 4 stars because I think the boldness hurts them and probably hurts Neandertal studies somewhat, too.

One peeve I want to get off my chest up front is that the Kindle version did not appear to have an About the Authors section. Again, probably not the authors' fault and this did not affect the rating, but goddamn it. Of course I Googled them, but I am tired of spending all my time on Google.

I can't remember if the authors stated up front how many Neandertal sites there are in the world, but I ultimately had to Google that too--it would have been good of them to have reminded us a few times throughout the text, particularly for those of us e-reading (it's helpful to remember that nowadays people are using many different formats), who can't easily page back and forth. It seems there are very few sites, maybe 50 or so, representing an occupation of at least 200,000 years. Sooooo, everything we know about Ns comes from these few sites. Which is not much to go on, and depends on what has fossilized. Which means that anything that might not have been preserved--items of cloth or wood, such as clothing, other decorative or ritual items--drums, for instance--might not have survived. Pending the discovery of such items or of a preserved person, we really don't have jack.

Still, we can, or the authors can, infer more than you might expect. And thus they do.

I won't give it all away, because this is a highly readable book that I recommend you do read. One takeaway is that, as others have said, a Neandertal could pass among us. They were humans, and could probably talk and even had lighter skin, compared to the modern humans they lived alongside toward the end there, and lighter hair (red hair in some cases) and eyes. They may even have had freckles. The notion that they were hulking, primate-looking beasts comes from a skeleton of a man who had been horribly injured and whose spine had healed into a hunched position.

I once dated a behavioral psychology professor (I know, I know! We argued long into the nights) who, skeptical of ADHD diagnoses (I know, I know!) wondered what the value to evolution would be of people who were so highly distractible. Yet, the authors here propose a personality profile of an entire human strain that actually does look like a subtype of ADHD. They suggest, based on the extremely small and far flung N settlements (so it seems--based, again, on what is a very small--but very consistent--sampling), the extremely long periods between innovations in tools (though they were prodigious and expert tool-users), their refined knowledge of hunting terrain and the supreme mastery over hunting massive and dangerous prey, the way they carried goods around, that Ns were incredibly good at short and long-term memory but not so good at working memory. That is, at holding a lot of things in mind at once. Multitasking. Keeping track of complex kinship arrangements. Managing a lot of people at one time. Dealing with outsiders and arranging trade. Well, I am good at these things, but for some reason I seem to be a magnet for ADHD men who are terrible at negotiating car deals and salary increases, who are overly optimistic about the intentions of others (bad at cheater detection, which the authors discuss at length), terrible with names, don't like cities, etc. You think like a Neandertal, I told my husband, upon finishing this book...I mean, maybe I just want a guy who can bring home mammoth meat? Hmmmm.

So, now I'm wondering about ALL these people nowadays who seem to be ADHD in this way. A lack of working memory seems to be present in a significant proportion of our line of humans as well, so this alone does not account for the supposed evolutionary advantage that "we" had over "them." I mean, there are a LOT of modern humans who just cannot seem to bring themselves to live in larger communities, who are suspicious of outsiders, who hate newer technologies, even despite supposedly having the skull shapes that indicate that they have the brain formation that WOULD indicate more working memory design. So I'm a little skeptical of this argument that Neandertals were structurally incapable of developing working memory.

But, if all Ns, just for the sake of argument, were much more likely to be hard-wired for what we at this moment in time diagnose as ADHD traits, and we all have some percentage of N genome in us, having mixed it in back in the Middle East when Cro-Mags and Ns first met up (as is currently hypothesized), ~60K years ago, before dividing again and spending 20K years apart, and supposedly never interbreeding again... do we get those ADHD genes from Ns? Or even earlier back from the homo heidelbergensis primate we both split off from? Is ADHD one of THE most fundamental human traits and not actually a deviation or disorder?

The trouble is, I can keep going with this, and keep describing a couple of people I know, because they are starting to look more and more like Neandertals. Not physically. Mentally. This is not an insult, because the authors take care to let us know that Ns have plenty of strengths as well as limitations, just like any of us. People who meet the TOTAL personality profile but are modern humans... I find that fishy. I don't think a modern human should be such a dead match. And I know several of these people. Which makes me think that, perhaps unconsciously, these authors have used actual people as templates. Which means that they aren't inferring Neandertal traits at all, but using familiar human traits to construct a Neandertal who is in fact a modern human.

And maybe that's so. Maybe Neandertals had just one type of human personality, making their culture so homogenous they couldn't survive. Though it's worth noting that although we like to view ourselves as a triumph of evolution, Neandertal culture did survive for much longer than ours has, so far.

Another problem is that the inferences about N personality are not just drawn from the archaeological evidence but also from the shapes of the head. Supposedly the skull shape would lend itself to the formation of parts of the brain devoted to one type of memory but not another. Sure, placed alongside what looks like a certain type of social organization, this is intriguing. But brain wiring is a funny thing. It's already looking like you can't put too much stock in it when it comes to animal intelligence and behavior. And I recently saw a slide showing a brain scan for a young man in his twenties with severe hydrocephalus. Most of his brain has turned to water; he only has a small amount of brain matter at the very edges, yet he is at the top of his class in mathematics at Oxford. This, I know, is different from someone born with hydrocephalus, or from someone raised in a culture of people with totally different brains and head shapes from ours. Nevertheless, there is only so much you can infer without seeing the entire brain, and indeed only so much you can infer from actually seeing the brain, because we are making and have made a lot of mistakes with animal brains as it is. Not to mention the brains of people of non-white races. Though we should still move forward with what we know, of course.

But since we DON'T have a Neandertal brain, and only have the skulls, isn't this the same sort of stereotyping we have fallen into in the past when we looked at craniums of, say, black people, and made generalizations about character?

So then, the question of Ns and their orientation to the spiritual or the supernatural. The authors maintain they probably had none. The basis for this is the relative lack of attention (compared with modern humans of the period of contemporary occupation) to death rites, and the lack of organization around fire. Ns did not have extensive hearths and there are no signs of their having spent a lot of time sitting around fires, presumably singing, dancing, telling stories, etc. When you look at modern human habitation sites and burials, they look more familiar to us than N sites do. But does that mean Ns had no interior or spiritual lives? One problem is that we don't have good comparisons. Which doesn't stop the authors from trying to make some. They try to compare Ns to other primates and to other hunter gatherers, who are, of course, still modern humans. The question is whether they make those comparisons well.

What qualifies as "supernatural"? We must be careful here. In fact Western traditions may be the only cultures on earth that have a sense of the supernatural. That is, monotheistic traditions. These are extremely new cultural outlooks. In most other cultures, spiritual experiences or views are not "super" natural. They are not that externalized. That is not to say that every culture views the spiritual in an animistic way, either. I believe animism is a far too simplistic term. It is just that for most people on earth, for most of human people, religion and culture, religion and life, have not been separate experiences. Most cultures do not even have a word for religion. So, it is possible that Ns were immersed in their experience of the sacred and they did not consider finding a way to express it. It wasn't that they were unable to. They did not feel the need. We can't know this, but this is as valid a thought experiment as any, and it is not far off from some cultural comparisons.

Let's also note that the sparsity of sites has not yielded much in the way of artifacts. It is possible that ritual items consisted of perishable items--flowers or herbs, say--that did not survive. Perhaps Ns drummed and danced during daylight hours, rather than around a fire, and we no longer have the drums. Perhaps drums or gourds were thought to be alive and were burned at the ends of their "lives." Perhaps Ns were tired due to what has been recognized as their significantly higher levels of exertion and therefore they simply went to sleep at dusk, and that's why they did not sit around fires jawing away into the night. They might have told their stories and sung their songs on the way back from their hunts. Unlike Cro-Mags, N women and children actively participated in the hunts and would have been returning with the men, so this would have been communal time, as was processing the meat on-site, whereas Cro-Mags would have needed the feasting, dancing, and other ritualized events as rites to reassemble everyone after the men returned from the hunt and the women and children from gathering. Ns mave have had rituals around hunting preparation, stalking, processing, and return that would be invisible to us.

Again, we cannot know, and therefore it is irresponsible to say, even to speculate, that they did not. But based on everything we know about human behavior, and even about animal behavior, it seems more unlikely, that they did not. Wolves gather and howl. Cats, domesticated and wild, often play with their food. Many animals seem to circle their food in repetitive ways, or have certain approaches to it or ways of cleaning it that seem repetitive or organized and consonant with the way the authors have described the term "ritual" for the purposes of their study.

In fact, the authors seem quite conservative in how much intelligence they want to attribute to animals, including primates. They assume that animals have no Theory of Mind; the jury is way out on this. They seem to believe that Neandertals lacked this, too, but the basis for this completely escapes me. We modern humans seem particularly invested in believing that we are unique in the history of the planet. We might be, but the thing that makes us unique, if we ever succeed in defining it, might not be a thing we value. Anyway, I have a feeling that this Theory of Mind thing will go the way of other means by which we've previously attempted to distinguish ourselves from "animals."

We seem to be stuck with the conclusion, at any rate, that it was the inflexibility of the Neandertals that defeated them, and that, yes, modern humans out-competed them. Somehow, the Ns were unable to accept the superior technology of the Cro-Mags, most notably the atlatls, or spear-throwers, that enabled modern humans to throw much lighter spears much farther, allowing them to bring down prey without being exposed to such grave personal danger. But what if it wasn't exactly inflexibility, which implies dumbness, but disgust? What if the Neandertals recognized that the spear-throwers had advantages but thought they were WIMPY? What if they just thought it was much cooler, possibly even more sacred, to hunt mammoths? And what if, therefore, what killed the Ns wasn't Cro-Mag out-competition but simply the changing environmental conditions that led to the decline of the mammoth? Or maybe even environmental decline coupled with the Ns' own success at hunting mammoth. Possibly the Cro-Mags, focusing on smaller game, were even in awe of the Ns and their prowess, and despite their shorter stature, ascribed to them the legendary status of giants.

I have no idea. Neandertals had a lot of time to think, is all I'm saying.

We continue to be stuck with our lenses, don't we. Regarding Neandertals, they had a nice run, but to the victors go the spoils and the story, and regarding animals, modern man is the measure, and modern man does the measuring.

All the same, what fun to take a look, and I'm glad these guys wrote this book.

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember writing papers on Neandertals for anthropology classes in university in the early 1980s and I am struck by how the same debates still rage in paleoanthropology. The whole "could Neadertals produce recognizable speech?" debate was on-going when I was a student, with much analysis of hyoid bones and a lot of ink spilt on the topic.

I like the approach of these two authors, taking hard evidence and trying to make reasonable conclusions about the lives of these people. Like any similar exercise, though, there are probably limits to how accurate they have been and I am sure they would readily concede that. Still, it is interesting speculation.

I can't help but think that this fascination with another human species says more about us that it does about Neandertals, however

[Erica Ball · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wicked discussion of what the Neandertal mind could have been like. The two authors are tops in their field and have been engaging in thought experiments for years (with an understandable conservative slant in their conclusions.) Thoroughly enjoyable and totally accessible!

[Paul H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

If your book includes the phrase "according to evolutionary psychologists" (i.e., literally nonsensical just-so stories) at least once per page, then you've failed as an author.

[L · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book that inspired me to do psychology A-level and then study neuroscience at uni

[Kara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since there is so little concrete data and so many questions about the Neanderthals, the book ends up being more an anthropological examination of modern humans with the authors wondering out loud if the Neanderthals shared those same traits.

Not a terrible book - but not terribly engaging or informative about the alleged subject matter.

[Steven R. McEvoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title and cover of this book immediately grabbed my attention. First, and they allude to this a few times in the book, is the series of commercials for car insurance with the slogan 'So easy even a caveman could do it'. And second, is the number of people I know who have applied Paleo or Primal caveman diet as part of their lifestyle and fitness regime. Those two points caused me to pick up the book. But this academic exercise was so much more than I could have expected. It was fascinating, and I found repeatedly that I could not put it down, or alternately had to put it down and really ponder and think about what the authors had just espoused. It was an incredible read and I have recommended it to about a dozen people, a few who told me they were hooked part way into the first chapter. The structure of the book is:

1. True Grit
2. The Caveman Diet
3. Zen and the Art of Spear Making
4. A Focus on Family
5. It's Symbolic
6. Speaking of Tongues
7. A Neandertal Walked into a Bar . . .
8. To Sleep, Perchance to Dream
9. You've Got Personality
10. Thinking Like a Neandertal
...
Read the rest of the review on my blog Book Reviews and More.

[Fred Kohn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an interesting collaboration between a psychologist and an anthropologist. I found it to be heavier on the speculation than on the facts, which was somewhat disappointing. I wish they had said more about anatomical differences that I have read about elsewhere which would have affected Neandertal running and throwing abilities. The authors also claimed no difference in the position of the hyoid bone between Neandertals and modern humans, which contradicts what I have read elsewhere. I also wish more had been said about Neandertal clothing. Nevertheless, speculation is always more interesting when it is done by trained scientists than by people without such training.

[Tor.com Publishing]

Neandertals were so similar to us anatomically and genetically that we believe the default position… should be that Neandertals were no different.” That's the central position of this book, the default from which they attempt to argue, & I find that central conceit to be absolutely the correct approach. Shedding the assumptions of "cave men" & it's antecedent assumptions that non-humans are sub-human seems the best paradigm to understanding Neanderthals. --MK

[Indah Threez Lestari · Rating 3 out of 5]

259 - 2016

[Gerrit off to Storygraph · Rating 4 out of 5]

The great thing about the book is that Wynn and Coolidge discuss the totality of Neanderthal lives, even stuff like humour and sleep. These are not normally discussed as it is hard to bring archaeological evidence to bear on them. Their creativity in drawing varied strands of evidence together leads to a very coherent account.

The relevant archaeological evidence is discussed well. I differ in my interpretation of some data, but Wynn and Coolidge give an interesting reading. Some important elements in their account have been superseded by new data:
- Neanderthal injuries turn out to be comparable to those of modern humans living at the same time (https://www.nature.com/articles/d4158...). At the time of writing, the received wisdom (which I taught students as well), was that Neanderthals led much more dangerous lives.
- There are suggestions of Neanderthal Cave art (https://www.nature.com/articles/d4158...)
- Neanderthal ornaments turn out to be (slightly?) more common and much older than was known at the time of writing. (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/art...)
- Neanderthals consume more plant foods and small prey than previously thought (https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retri...) (https://www.newscientist.com/article/...)
- Interbreeding happened more frequently and was bidirectional (https://www.cell.com/ajhg/fulltext/S0...) (at the time of writing it was thought that only Neanderthal DNA entered our genome, while no modern human genes were present in Neanderthals)

This means that Neanderthal symbolic and social behaviour may have been more complex than presented and the reasons for their extinction stranger (and sadder) still

The funniest, and saddest thing, is how the authors' view of current society has proved overly optimistic. In their thought experiment on how a Neanderthal adoptee would cope in our society, they suggest: "Our Neandertal would be unlikely to be attracted to public life, and if we was, he wouldn't be very good at it. It would not be his lack of complex syntax that would handicap him (at least for some constituencies), but his tendency for direct speech. He would not be very good at code-switching and diplomatic speech, and would be unwilling and unable to negotiate effectively with enemies."

How I rue the authors have been proved wrong...

[Ali · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really tried to like this book, I did. In the early parts, the clear elaboration of the evidence around Neandertal and equally clear explanation of how the authors drew conclusions from it were great. The overly simplified account of Paskifa navigation wasn't a big deal, and while the decision to use "Native Australians" instead of language or tribal names was, indeed, insulting (this is considered a demeaning term by Aboriginal people) and unhelpful (due to lack of specificity), there were other things to focus on.
But as the book winds on, two things became clear. One, the understanding of Homo Sapiens Sapiens - used to contrast with Neandertals - was not based on evidence but an enthusiasm for Evolutionary Psychology - a discipline I loath and have little time for, and sexist Freudian crap. Two - The evidence base for Neandertal's when this book was written was pretty thin - and the authors here spine a *lot* out of what is very little.
This decreased my sympathy with the increasingly offensive side references - comments about people with personality disorders, distinguishing between high IQ people with autism and schizophrenia vs the rest, and pointless (unreferenced)gems like "Women with antisocial personality disorder usually don't murder other people, but sometimes they do, for example, poisoning their husband or boyfriend for money or drugs and sometimes for apparently no reason at all".
I'd skip this one - I'm hitting up some more recent publications next and we'll see how we go.

[Nolan Christensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written book that covers a vast number of subjects in order to discuss and define the skills, capacities, and limitations of neanderthals based on present-day research. I was pleasantly surprised with the flow of the prose, enjoyed the multiple rabbitholes that provided context for claims and statements, and from my own research think that much of what was claimed is plausible.

Would recommend to those who prefer to not slog through dry text and enjoy something educational with a little flavor. Would read again.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just read this book on a whim. It goes through what we known about Neandertals. Their physical makeup, origins, and what we can infer about the cognition. They authors utilize a lot of anthropological and psychological data to infer characteristics about Neandertals. The book is well written and easy to follow. My only knock on the book is that the later chapters are highly speculative. It is hard to know what emotions and thoughts Neandertals actually had. Still, it was an enjoyable read.

[Chantal Kloth · Rating 3 out of 5]

quick and easy read but with a lot of focus on modern day homo sapiens and our psychology - which is definitely not what i was expecting this book to focus so heavily on. nevertheless, still lots of insightful information on neanderthals and how they likely functioned

[Kitty Red-Eye · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit speculative, but a cool thought experiment with basis in what we can actually know.

[Riversue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting but a bit dated.

[Alan]

An amazing intro to Neandertals! It's astounding how much we can know or reasonably deduce from the verrrrry sketchy remains of a group that died out 40,000 years ago. It's also a pretty good intro to cognitive psychology in general. Each chapter is a self-contained explanation of one topic (e.g. family, symbols, personality) that assumes no background knowledge but still manages to get pretty deep. They almost never lost me or bored me with technical details.

One slight drawback is that they are not exactly consistent with their 'control group'—they compare and contrast Neandertals with modern Homo sapiens sapiens, ancient Homo sapiens sapiens, or chimpanzees, depending on which data are available. Overall they mainly compare Neandertals to modern Homo sapiens sapiens, which is perfect if you want to understand the difference between your own psychology and their psychology, but sometimes I really wanted to know instead how they compared to our ancestors, their contemporaries. (I will be sure to read their other book about Homo sapiens sapiens!)

My last reservation is that although they usually do a good job at identifying how confident they are—and why—about any given speculation, sometimes they do not. Often they provide an intricate discussion of a debate, but unconvincingly sum it up with their expert opinion. This is especially true in the chapters about language and dreaming. However, major props to them for trying! Most archeologists wouldn't touch those topics with a 2-meter Cro-Magnon spear.

They go to great lengths to refute popular biases against cavemen, but every now and then I wondered whether they were simply transplanting western biases toward 'savages' onto the Neandertals. In particular, when they talk about language and speech: they suggest something awfully similar to the Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax—the idea that 'too many concrete nouns and not enough abstractions' is characteristic of primitive speech.

Inevitably, Wynn and Coolidge will be wrong in some ways—and they are very clear on that point themselves! This picture of Neandertals is surely 1000 times better than the picture you currently have, or any other picture you are likely to get without years of anthropological training.

[Melissa Embry · Rating 4 out of 5]

What did it actually feel like to be a Neandertal, ask anthropologist Thomas Wynn and psychologist Frederick L. Coolidge in their admittedly speculative but scientifically-grounded, "Now to Think Like a Neanderthal"?

After working together for a decade on the evolution of cognition, as the authors state in the book's preface, and arguing from what is known about Neandertals (and yes, they use the modern German spelling of the word), Wynn and Coolidge make some inspired guesses about the language, family life, mental life and personalities of our extinct but closest human relatives.

Warning that "this is not a 'how to' book for adolescent boys (of any age), nor is it a manual for survivalists who fear an imminent apocalypse," Wynn and Coolidge interpret ancient fossils and artifacts and sometimes engage in thought experiments both to throw light on the mental lives of Neandertals and ourselves.

This journey through the Neandertal mind will take readers from their diet (not as paleo as we may think) to their technology, from their ability to make jokes (physical humor, probably, puns most unlikely), to their dream life.

Sometimes their interpretations differ from those of other scientists. For instance, Wynn and Coolidge see little more than a fortuitous coincidence in a massive kill of mammoths and woolly rhinos at the rocky cliff of La Cotte on the English Channel island of Jersey, where authors such as Dimitra Papagianni and Michael A. Morse in "Neanderthals Rediscovered" see more evidence of detailed planning. Still, it's hard to know who's right when the prime suspects for the mass slaying left the scene more than 30,000 years ago.

I found particularly fascinating the chapters on possible Neandertal personality traits and on whether Neandertals or modern humans would fare if transplanted into each others' worlds. I wished for a bibliography, but the glossary at the book's end was particularly helpful for this non-scientist.

[Shawn Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

What can a bunch of bones in a cave tell us about other humans? Actually, quite a lot. And when combined with other artifacts taken from Neandertal sites and DNA evidence they can provide a fairly complete picture of Neandertal's life and development.

Neandertal DNA is found in modern humans... unless the modern humans are from Africa. Other fascinating theories include how Neandertals viewed death, Neandertal speech, the Neandertal process (or lack thereof) towards progress, and their diet. The injuries present on preserved Neandertal skeletons give remarkable insight into how their society functioned as a whole - who was "saved" and who was not provide intriguing clues into behavioral patterns. There are even projections as to how a Neandertal would fare in today's society.

This book has far more information than I would have expected in something mass-marketed, and it is done in a style that is engaging and interesting without causing concentration headaches. The chapters are well broken up and easily digested, and the examples are excellent.

Although this book is non-fiction, and the line towards fiction is never blurred, anyone who enjoyed Jean Auel's Earth's Children books (The Clan of the Cave Bear series - not including the travesty that was The Land of Painted Caves ) would probably enjoy this book as well - and would also most likely recognize some of the characters Ms. Auel wrote about.

[Brad Wheeler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book up at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum after seeing some of the exhibits they had there on early humans, and it was a great choice. The authors--one an anthropologist and the other a psychologist--did a great job of pulling together disparate sources to put together a convincing, if highly incomplete, view of Neandertals.

The real value of the book, at least for me, weren't the areas that talked about our human cousins. There just isn't enough information to really draw firm conclusions, and a lot of the information is by necessity based on very little evidence and a lot of supposition. It was evocative and easy read though definitely not scholarly.

No, the best parts for me was where the authors explained elements of the Homo Sapiens experience by way of contrast with the Neandertals. This text is the first I've ever read that explained semiotics in a relevant and useful way, for instance, by explaining how the Neandertals likely lacked the ability to make abstract symbols and what that might mean for their culture (or lack of culture, more likely).

I'd recommend this book to anyone with a scientifically literate mind who likes learning something new. It's a short read, but an entertaining one.

This makes, what, three 5-star books in a row for me? Apparently I'm just good at picking 'em.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating - well researched and organized, serious but often witty, clearly written, and very thought-provoking. The authors are professors at the U. of Colorado in different but complementary fields and have worked together for years. Here they draw on the available evidence from several scientific fields, ranging from bones and artifacts to remains of the animals the Neandertals hunted to comparisons among modern humans, other primates, and extinct ancestors we share with Neandertals, to draw careful conclusions about what their mental and emotional lives were like.

The findings could be grouped into the definite, the probable, and the simply possible; these authors avoid going too far out on any limbs. Still, they're able to make a convincing case for a likely personality type for an average Neandertal person. The result is a type that isn't the average among modern humans but is also not that rare - you probably know some people their profile would fit; I certainly do.

As a mental health type, I was especially interested in the consideration of potential mental disorders among Neandertals, along with the examination of their probable dream life.

Well worth reading. I have to say, though, that the picture on the dust jacket looks nothing like a Neandertal.

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Given that the topic of this book is one of my favorite thought experiments, I snatched it off the shelf at the library the moment I saw it and started reading it right away. I think it's fascinating to think about the lifeways of earlier hominins (especially Neandertals) and to try to envision what they were like, how they were different from us and how they weren't. So it was pretty cool that these authors wrote a very interesting book about exactly that. Wynn is an archaeologist, and I thoroughly enjoyed the discussions of the implications of the Neandertal archaeological record: "burials", tool making, hearth patterns, hunting and gathering practices, population density and movement on the landscape, etc. Coolidge comes from psychology, and his contributions included very cool sections on language and humor development in modern humans and the potential comparisons in Neandertals. There were sections that felt a little bit like filler, but others were fascinating enough to make up for those. The best bit is at the end, where the authors conjecture about what it would be like to have a Neandertal baby grow up in modern human society, and also how a modern human baby would do if raised by Neandertals.

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found How to Think Like a Neandertal to be a suprisingly good book. There is truly a wealth of information crammed into 188 pages. However, if you think from the title and length that this will be a quick and easy read, think again. Professors Wynn and Coolidge are clearly from academia as the character of the writng clearly proves. I will say that when they use academic jargon, they are ususally very good about providing simple expalnations of the terms they use - perhaps assuming that the readers are thinking like Neandertals. I really like the fact that they are not afraid to make informed speculations about what Neandertals and their abilities. When they speculated they always said so and invariably their speculations were based on well thought out evidence. There is an excellent glossary at the end. Very well done and worth the effort if this is a topic that interests you.

[Javier Avilés · Rating 4 out of 5]

Qué libro extraordinario! Rigurosamente académico y rigurosamente accesible, un balance perfecto. A pesar del título, los autores no pretenden escribir un libro de autoayuda para los que les interese "retomar" la vida feral de los ancestros, sino que el "how to think" del título alude a cierta postura antropológica: examinar lo que el estudio de los yacimientos neandertals nos dice sobre su estilo de vida, sociedad y sicología y cómo se compara ésto con los homo sapiens. Urge subrayar lo que ya sabemos, los neandertals NO SON nuestros ancestros, ambos nos derivamos hace miles de años de un ancestro común, homo hidelbergensis. Esa separación y distancia es lo que está en juego en esta lectura. No hay diseño inteligente, ciertas especies lograron sobresalir en sus respectivos ambientes y predominar. No hay plan, solo diferentes iteraciones aleatorias.

[Kerry Cunningham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recall going into this book thinking, Ok, you're just obsessed with Neanderthals, and this is probably a step too far. The premise sounded a bit strained.

I have to report that some months later, when I find myself talking with someone about Neanderthals (can't happen often enough), I often find myself culling tidbits from this book. While much of Wynn's argumentation (ok, all) is necessarily speculative, I felt the speculation was educated, balanced and well supported. It is fascinating to think about how another species of human might have thought. It is a natural for me (graduate training is in psychology) to think about that, but I find that of all the really esoteric crap I subject friends and family to, this line of esoterica is among the least eye-glazing.

[David James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Witty and informative. The authors do their best to reconstruct the mental life of Neandertals based on what we know of their daily lives. There can't help but be a fair bit of speculation owing to our limited knowledge, but the duo argue their points well, while frequently reminding readers that these are best-guess conclusions. This book is a lot of fun, as it allows readers to delve into ancient history and garner a sense of how our closest cousins made their way through this world. Frequent, well-timed humor and plenty of modern day parallels keep things moving along nicely. A good place to discover your inner caveman.

[Peggy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who would have thought that a book about earlier hominids would make me laugh? This was a fun read. The authors took scientific data collected for decades and made it relevant and interesting and applicable to us who dominate the planet today. I know why sitting around a campfire late into the night is so comforting and familiar. I know why women wear red lipstick. I know why our species lives and the neandertal died out. (it's all about adapting to change). I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I highly recommend this for anyone with an interest in neuroscience, evolution, and what makes us human. The author reviews the latest research on the neandertal's and early man, but also current neuroscience and DNA research to portray a surprisingly complete picture of the similarities and differences between modern humans and some of our predecessors.