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A review by mo3rgan
Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes by Svante Pääbo
2.0
I presumed from the title that this would be a book about neanderthals. Instead, it is about molecular biology.
There’s nothing wrong with molecular biology. At times, I found it interesting to read about the challenges of extracting DNA from fossils, and how Pääbo found ways to accomplish that. This book was recommended by a friend who studies ancient DNA, and I enjoyed learning about her field.
I had just thought that in reading a book called Neanderthal Man I would learn something about the lives of neanderthals, and I mostly did not. This book is maybe 80% procedures, 19% autobiography, and 1% conclusions about neanderthals.
If you care more about conclusions than procedures, you’re better off reading the abstracts from Svante Pääbo’s 2010 articles that form the basis of this book:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5100745/
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09710?__hstc=13887208
There’s nothing wrong with molecular biology. At times, I found it interesting to read about the challenges of extracting DNA from fossils, and how Pääbo found ways to accomplish that. This book was recommended by a friend who studies ancient DNA, and I enjoyed learning about her field.
I had just thought that in reading a book called Neanderthal Man I would learn something about the lives of neanderthals, and I mostly did not. This book is maybe 80% procedures, 19% autobiography, and 1% conclusions about neanderthals.
If you care more about conclusions than procedures, you’re better off reading the abstracts from Svante Pääbo’s 2010 articles that form the basis of this book:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5100745/
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature09710?__hstc=13887208