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A review by jasonfurman
The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals Died Out and We Survived by Clive Finlayson
3.0
This book addresses the question of why the neanderthals died out while homo sapiens survived. It rejects the genetic superiority of the later and is scathing on the thesis that homo sapiens played a causal role in the extinction of the neanderthals. Instead, Finlayson argues that the main culprit was the cooling climate. Moreover, he argues that this development disproportionately affected the somewhat more successful neanderthals because they were more used to one way of life, rather than the more marginal and thus more innovative homo sapiens. The analogy he offers is a study in Gibraltar that found that rich families suffered less from diseases from poor water. But when there was a drought and everyone had to drink dirty water the poor survived (because they were resistant) while the rich suffered comparatively more.
It is a somewhat interesting thesis, although marred by the suspicion that one politically motivated narrative (conquest by the superior homo sapiens) is just being replaced with another (climate change combined with a form of moral relativism). The evidence for the later seems thin, especially given the many large climatic changes that took place over the approximately 500,000 years since homo sapiens and neanderthals split off from each other.
As for the writing, two complaints: (1) the author is prone to grandiose statements about how this book differs from the previous literature (e.g., he finds the rejection of the "Out of Africa" hypothesis particularly important, even though he just replaces it with the observation that the eurasian zone was geographically and climatically contiguous with Africa). (2) the first third/half of the book is an uninspired retelling of evolution through about 50,000 years ago.
All of this aside, Finlayson hits his stride in the second half of the book when he focuses on the period from 50,000 years ago (when neanderthals were in Europe but homo sapiens were not) to 10,000 years ago (the end of the last ice age and the invention of agriculture). This is presented with a reasonable amount of detail and grounding in the original scholarly material, to which Finlayson is a contributor.
It is a somewhat interesting thesis, although marred by the suspicion that one politically motivated narrative (conquest by the superior homo sapiens) is just being replaced with another (climate change combined with a form of moral relativism). The evidence for the later seems thin, especially given the many large climatic changes that took place over the approximately 500,000 years since homo sapiens and neanderthals split off from each other.
As for the writing, two complaints: (1) the author is prone to grandiose statements about how this book differs from the previous literature (e.g., he finds the rejection of the "Out of Africa" hypothesis particularly important, even though he just replaces it with the observation that the eurasian zone was geographically and climatically contiguous with Africa). (2) the first third/half of the book is an uninspired retelling of evolution through about 50,000 years ago.
All of this aside, Finlayson hits his stride in the second half of the book when he focuses on the period from 50,000 years ago (when neanderthals were in Europe but homo sapiens were not) to 10,000 years ago (the end of the last ice age and the invention of agriculture). This is presented with a reasonable amount of detail and grounding in the original scholarly material, to which Finlayson is a contributor.