Making a powerful case for the Neanderthals as a separate species in no way inferior to modern humans, James Shreeve ponders the mystery of their disappearance in The Neandertal Enigma (Morrow $25, ISBN 0 688 09407 4), surveying the work among others of archaeologist Lewis Binford at Combe-Grenal in France. He is persuaded that the separation of tasks for which Binford finds evidence shows that the Neanderthals were indeed unlike us. And their disappearance? Shreeve points out that in evolutionary terms you do not have to fail to die out, merely to succeed less often than another species. This may have been the Neanderthals’ fate.
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