What if Neanderthals weren’t primitive brutes but inventive, resilient humans? This book shows how two decades of archaeology, ancient DNA, and razor‑sharp dating overturn the caricature.

Papagianni and Morse braid cave floors and genomes to trace Neanderthal origins, journeys, and daily lives: finely made stone tools, coordinated big‑game hunts, care for the injured, and hints of symbolism in pigments and feathers. They pinpoint the meetings with Homo sapiens, map the genes that crossed between us, and argue that climate whiplash, tiny populations, and demographic bad luck mattered more than any built‑in deficit.

Clear about what evidence can and can’t prove, it shows how a single layer of sediment—or a fragment of genome—can redraw a timeline. The Neanderthals Rediscovered reframes what counts as “human”, and it’s part of your own ancestry.