Neanderthals Among Us

Why are we so obsessed with a group of archaic humans who disappeared 40,000 years ago? Neanderthals Among Us brings together an accessible history of scientific debates over human origins and wide-ranging representations of race, gender and prehistory in popular culture to tell a story of our endless fascination with Neanderthals – ever since their discovery in 1856.

Drawing on a wide range of sources – including the medieval Wild Man figure, nineteenth-century racial science, museum reconstructions, horror films, science fiction, the rise and fall of the Neanderthal insult, and genetic ancestry testing – Peter Sahlins’ original and compelling history of Neanderthals in the modern world makes us rethink what it means to be human – and different.