Review by Choice Review
In 1848, quarry workers on Gibraltar recovered a fossilized human face that was in fact the first adult representative of the Neanderthals, that species or subspecies of extinct humans that inhabited Europe and western Asia for nearly 200,000 years before becoming extinct around 30,000 years ago. As Stringer writes in his contribution, had this specimen been recognized for what it was in the ten years before a faceless skullcap was recovered in the Neander Valley near Dusseldorf, human evolutionists would be ceaselessly discussing the Calpican rather than the Neanderthal problem. A scientific conference was held on Gibraltar in 1998 to memorialize that first discovery; this book is its result. The 28 short papers by a distinguished group of international authors survey such topics as glacial climate, the later Paleolithic archaeology of Iberia, the biology of Neanderthals, and the dates, fauna, and geology of Gibraltar (and other) caves. New excavations are ongoing in this cave-rich region, led by the editors and their colleagues, and one can hope for new finds in the years to come. This volume is one of the better contributions to the wide-ranging study of the place of Neanderthals and their culture in the framework of European, especially Iberian, prehistory. Recommended. General readers; upper-division undergraduates through faculty. E. Delson CUNY Herbert H. Lehman College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
