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Dr. Sykes has written an enthralling book about our distant cousins, who it turns out were more like us than we might think. Firstly, Rebecca Wragg Sykes writes like an angel. Each chapter has a short introductory elegiac reflection on the information which follows, and these are written with the skill of a poet. These pieces make the book a joy to read. And then there is the text itself: the amount of detail amassed by the scientists who investigate these ancient relatives of ours is just astounding. Dr. Sykes describes the research and methods used to analyze the sites where Neanderthal remains are found, and why each tiny scrap (literally) can be important. For instance, did you know that these Neanderthal cousins of ours probably picked their teeth with tiny sticks? Or that the calculus on their teeth can show us what kinds of food they ate? All of this information is now available to be studied thoroughly because of new computer technology and better tools.

Everything found at the many sites around the world can be important. Obviously, Neanderthals were able to travel long distances, and did so. They also made tools of varying complexity, and used fire to cook their food. The kinds of tools they made are described in great detail; this is relevant because it shows a degree of thinking logically and a sense of organization and planning.

There is an enormous amount of speculation about the evidence for possible burial practices and the creation of symbolic objects. Of course, there exists proof of interbreeding between Neanderthals and H. sapiens which has ignited even more research. And questions. Neanderthals were definitively gone by 40,000 years ago. The question is why? There are many possible answers to this vexing question: too rapid changes in climate; changes in food supply; competition and overcrowding from other hominins; even a possible pandemic unknown to us now which might have adversely affected them but not others. Perhaps the answer is all of the above.

As an interested reader, my own feeling is that H. sapiens benefited from some slight genetic differences which enabled them to cooperate on a larger scale in greater numbers and over vaster distances than their competitors. The question of the evolution of language is not touched on very much in Dr. Sykes� book, but she does discuss the possibilities of the use of verbal communication. With the slight change in genomic structure in the brains of H. sapiens, which she discusses, it is possible that this gave our lineage a leg up. Considering that language became ubiquitous in humans only about 40,000 years ago, a mere blink of the eye in evolutionary terms, it seems an important advantage which enabled us, for better or worse, to colonize the entire globe. But, it should be emphasized, that our lineage did not "beat" the Neanderthals, we likely out-cooperated and out-competed them.

In the final chapter of her book, Dr. Sykes writes beautifully and movingly about the need for science in society at large, and the unbiased examination of human origins.

"Yet the Neanderthals were never some sort of highway service station en route to Real People. They were state-of-the-art humans, just of a different sort. Their fate was a tapestry woven from the lives of individual hybrid babies, entire assimilated groups, and in remoter corners of Eurasia, lonely dwindling lineages - endlings - who left nothing behind but DNA sifting slowly down into the dirt of a cave floor."

And, just to make things even more interesting, Dr. Sykes has a wicked sense of humor.

There are many more aspects to this book that I could discuss; all that makes it one of the best books I've read this year. In the end, we must realize that Neanderthals were our Kindred, the title of this spectacularly beautiful book.