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Neanderthal Man
- In Search of Lost Genomes
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
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Publisher's summary
A preeminent geneticist hunts the Neanderthal genome to answer the biggest question of them all: What does it mean to be human?
What can we learn from the genes of our closest evolutionary relatives? Neanderthal Man tells the story of geneticist Svante Pbo’s mission to answer that question, beginning with the study of DNA in Egyptian mummies in the early 1980s and culminating in his sequencing of the Neanderthal genome in 2009. From Pbo, we learn how Neanderthal genes offer a unique window into the lives of our hominin relatives and may hold the key to unlocking the mystery of why humans survived while Neanderthals went extinct. Drawing on genetic and fossil clues, Pbo explores what is known about the origin of modern humans and their relationship to the Neanderthals and describes the fierce debate surrounding the nature of the two species’ interactions.
A riveting story about a visionary researcher and the nature of scientific inquiry, Neanderthal Man offers rich insight into the fundamental question of who we are.
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The extraordinary Siddhartha Mukherjee has written a biography of the gene as deft, brilliant, and illuminating as his extraordinarily successful biography of cancer. Weaving science, social history, and personal narrative to tell us the story of one of the most important conceptual breakthroughs of modern times, Mukherjee animates the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices.
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It's a Wonderful Book
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Herding Hemingway's Cats
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- Narrated by: Kat Arney
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
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The language of genes has become common parlance. We know they make your eyes blue, your hair curly or your nose straight. The media tells us that our genes control the risk of cancer, heart disease, alcoholism or Alzheimer's. The cost of DNA sequencing has plummeted from billions of pounds to a few hundred, and gene-based advances in medicine hold huge promise. So we've all heard of genes, but how do they actually work?
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A non-scientists misguided interpretation
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The World Before Us
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A fascinating investigation of the origin of humans based on incredible new discoveries and advanced scientific technology.
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The First Human
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This dynamic chronicle of the race to find the "missing links" between humans and apes transports readers into the highly competitive world of fossil hunting and into the lives of the ambitious scientists intent on pinpointing the dawn of humankind. The quest to find where and when the earliest human ancestors first appeared is one of the most exciting and challenging of all scientific pursuits.
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Interesting subject, poor execution
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13 Things That Don't Make Sense
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Science starts to get interesting when things don't make sense. Science's best-kept secret is that there are experimental results and reliable data that the most brilliant scientists can neither explain nor dismiss. If history is any precedent, we should look to today's inexplicable results to forecast the future of science. Michael Brooks heads to the scientific frontier to meet 13 modern-day anomalies and discover tomorrow's breakthroughs.
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10 interesting chapters-read epiloge first
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The atom, the big bang, DNA, natural selection - all are ideas that have revolutionized science; and all were dismissed out of hand when they first appeared. The surprises haven't stopped in recent years, and in At the Edge of Uncertainty, best-selling author Michael Brooks investigates the new wave of radical insights that are shaping the future of scientific discovery.
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All smoke, no fire
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Over the past 20 years, paleontologists have made tremendous fossil discoveries, including fossils that mark the growth of whales, manatees, and seals from land mammals and the origins of elephants, horses, and rhinos. Today there exists an amazing diversity of fossil humans, suggesting we walked upright long before we acquired large brains, and new evidence from molecules that enable scientists to decipher the tree of life as never before.
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NOT WORTH THE PRICE OF ADDMISSION
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When leading Princeton physicist Paul Steinhardt began working in the 1980s, scientists thought they knew all the conceivable forms of matter. The Second Kind of Impossible is the story of Steinhardt’s 35-year-long quest to challenge conventional wisdom. It begins with a curious geometric pattern that inspires two theoretical physicists to propose a radically new type of matter - one that raises the possibility of new materials with never-before-seen properties but that violates laws set in stone for centuries.
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In anticipation of low review marks...
- By James S. on 05-14-19
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Creation
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What is life? Humans have been asking this question for thousands of years. But as technology has advanced and our understanding of biology has deepened, the answer has evolved. For decades, scientists have been exploring the limits of nature by modifying and manipulating DNA, cells, and whole organisms to create new ones that could never have previously existed on their own.
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The Goldilocks book on what is life
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Remarkable Creatures
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Just 150 years ago, most of our world was an unexplored wilderness. Our sense of its age was vastly off the mark. And what we believed to be the history of our own species consisted of fantastic myths and fairy tales; fossils, known for millennia, were seen as the bones of dragons and other imagined creatures. How did we learn so much so quickly? Remarkable Creatures celebrates the pioneers who replaced our fancies with the even more remarkable real story of how our world evolved.
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A Remarkable Journey
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Deep Truth
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A new world is emerging before our eyes, while the unsustainable world of the past struggles to continue. Both worlds reflect the beliefs of our past. Both exist - but only for now. Which world do you choose? Best-selling author and visionary scientist Gregg Braden suggests that the hottest issues that divide us as families, nations, and civilizations-seemingly separate concerns such as war, terror, abortion, suicide, genocide, the death penalty, poverty, economic collapse, and nuclear war - are actually related.
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Good Information
- By David on 08-13-12
By: Gregg Braden
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Preeminent paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey brings us along on her remarkable journey to reveal the diversity of our early pre-human ancestors and how past climate change drove their evolution. She offers a fresh account of our past, as recent breakthroughs have allowed new analysis of her team’s fossil findings and vastly expanded our understanding of our ancestors. Meave’s own personal story is replete with drama, from thrilling discoveries on the shores of Lake Turkana to run-ins with armed herders and every manner of wildlife, to raising her children....
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What listeners say about Neanderthal Man
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Neuron
- 01-19-15
Excellent science tale
In this book the Swedish professor, Svante Päbo, who is currently running a lab at the Max Planck institute in Leipzig, tells his tale about how he ended up sequencing the Neanderthal genome. It is a well balanced tale which contains just the right mixture of personal details (including that he is bisexual and that he had a long affair with a woman married to a colleague), and science.
To my relief Päbo skips over his early childhood and jumps straight to the time when he studied medicine in Uppsala. Having worked with DNA sequencing Päbo wondered whether DNA could be extracted from old samples. First he tried a cow liver that he had stored in the lab for some time. When he realised that this was no problem obtained tissue from an egyptian mummy (which he had been interested in for some time). Though it involved some difficulties (describes in much detail in the book), Päbo managed to extract DNA from the mummy as well. When he sent his manuscript to a professor at Berkeley, the professor, who did not realize that Päbo had not even earned his PhD, asked if he could not come and spend his sabbatical at Päbo’s laboratory. Since Päbo did not have a laboratory, he ended up going to Berkeley instead.
What impressed me most about Päbo, is how he has managed to pursue one important goal (sequence the Neanderthal genome), for more than two decades. He has approached this goal in a methodical, stepwise manner, so that in retrospect, everything makes sense. Päbo also makes an effort to describe the often advanced methods used to attain his goal. For me (I have a PhD in neuroscience but only superficial knowledge about DNA), the level was just right, however, I think that even readers who have very little prior knowledge can learn a lot.
In parallel with this scientific tale, Päbo describes the Neanderthals and the world they lived in before they went extinct 30.000 years ago. Indeed one of this book's thrills is learning what the discoveries in the laboratory says about the life of our ancestors. Fire example, it was long thought (and still believed by many), that Neanderthals were an inferior race who went entirely extinct. However Päbo's discoveries indicate that Neanderthals were dominant to us and that because of interbreeding between our race and Neanderthals, modern humans actually have some Neanderthal DNA in them (some more than others).This interplay between scientific theory and its implications, methodological developments and what it tells us about our ancestors also makes this one of the best books I have read when it comes to illustrating the scientific process. Despite his success, Päbo at least appears to maintain an all important skeptical attitude towards his own work and he is careful not to make categorical claims when they are not warranted.
All in all the Neanderthal man is an impressive scientific story told by an impressive scientist. I would not be surprised if, in a few years, Päbo receives a well earned Nobel prize.
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72 people found this helpful
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- Mark
- 08-29-15
Not really about Neanderthal man
I’m very interested in Neanderthal Man. I’ve always been intrigued by this species of hominin that appeared very well adapted to survival. They were solid, well-built folks who looked like they would be much better at toughing out an ice-age, without thermal underwear, than we puny humans. And yet they didn’t survive. We cunningly killed them off, somehow. Either by defeating them in battle or outcompeting them for resources; I’m not exactly sure how we managed it, and that is all part of the fascination.
But this book isn’t about that story. This book is in fact the autobiography of a Swedish scientist who painstakingly uncovered the Neanderthal genome by analysing samples from ancient Neanderthal bones – an incredibly difficult task. It’s a proper autobiography, with extra-marital affairs and sex on the beach, but its main focus is the epic scientific endeavour to find the genome, spread over many years and including countless tribulations and setbacks.
If I’d read the by-line of the book (‘in search of lost genomes’), then I’d probably have realised that it was not going to be about Neanderthals, how they lived, what they got up to, why they succumbed to extinction, but I didn’t. As it was, the story of the quest for the genome was still fascinating and well worth a listen.
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- krista
- 06-12-15
Not what I thought
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
It would depend on who that friend was!
Were the concepts of this book easy to follow, or were they too technical?
Very very technical but still I caught a lot of it because he describes things very well. I have a mere bachelors degree so this was... a lot for me. I by no means caught it all but did learn a lot.
Any additional comments?
I really thought this would be more about our ancient ancestors and Neanderthals and give a lot of details about the past. Instead it is very autobiographical and primarily about the author's (admittedly) interesting career and life. As a result I have learned A TON about the science behind the dating of ancient artifacts and fossils. If you are not in the science field it could also be an eye-opening view into the nature of research... rustling up funding and the race to publish... the competition etc.
It's not what I thought it would be but it has definitely been interesting and I have learned new things. Boy do I wish I were smarter though...
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46 people found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 12-20-14
Fascinating, well-balanced read
What made the experience of listening to Neanderthal Man the most enjoyable?
I absolutely loved this book. For a subject with great potential for being a very dry read - it is a play-by-play recount of a couple of decades work on sequencing archaic DNA, after all - I was glad to find it a very engaging, well paced, and extremely well-written read.
I have a science background and am well-read in this specific topic, but the author wrote the details of genetic research in a manner that lay persons too could readily follow, whilst not dumbing it down. The story of the unceasing struggles over the years to first find archaic DNA, and to then coax it to reveal its secrets using what were for many years extremely labour-intensive techniques, is an inspiring theme in itself for anyone working on an extended and challenging project. The staggered evolution of lab technology since the project's beginnings, and the impacts both positive and negative that these had on the research progress was a tale worth telling in its own right. Not much is visible in the public arena of the hard work and innumerable setbacks that scientific researchers go through behind the scenes, and it is easy I think for the public to imagine that 'they' just put a few pieces of bone into a machine, press a button, and suddenly a holographic image pops up of the decedent in question, glaring out at them with heavy Neanderthal frown and clutching his lower paleolithic spiked club. This book shares the true nature of genetic archaeology, politics, scandals and all.
Speaking of which, I also enjoyed the human aspects of the research project team. Hearing stories of the interpersonal dynamics at play both within the research team and between them and external bodies nicely rounded out the scientific aspects of the story. Some reviewers on Amazon did feel the more personal stories of the author's love life a bit unnecessary, but whilst surprised at the direction the book took I didn't mind those either; it was nice to hear more of the human being writing the story beyond his research prowess, especially since the book already had me hooked from the start.
Overall this is a great book that I'll certainly listen to again. Having read (i.e. listened to!) many other books on evolution, especially of humans, it was invaluable to hear the stories behind the genome sequencing I had heard so much of and have seen referenced so often in other books. The new information regarding Neanderthal lineage and that of related groups, such as the Denisovans, shed so much invaluable light on their history (and some big surprises too) that a book specifically discussing this research in depth is well worth the read for anyone interested in human origins.
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33 people found this helpful
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- Spinnaker
- 03-28-15
Author's candor is refreshing, but book is
The author's candor is refreshing, but it seems that the book serves more to promote the author's glory than to tell us about Neanderthal Man. Be prepared for it to be heavy on molecular genetics, chemistry, laboratory techniques, and ivory tower power-politics rather than on illuminating tales about our ancient ancestors and Neanderthals.
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23 people found this helpful
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- D. Littman
- 11-27-14
Excellent, human-scale, book about science
What made the experience of listening to Neanderthal Man the most enjoyable?
The author (& protagonist/narrator) made the hard science in the book very easy to listen to. He interweaves the drama & the process of science with the personal ambitions of scientists, annals of his own life & career. It all makes the science portion exciting, without the reader having to know all of the details he goes over. The narration is excellent. And I found it hard to put down my iPod throughout (thereby accumulating lots of podcasts, science-centric & otherwise, that I could enjoy when the book was done).
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15 people found this helpful
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- John
- 04-26-15
Interesting Stuff
This book is just fascinating. It is a compelling biography of an important scientist's quest to unlock the mystery of pre-history. Although the subject matter is highly complex, the author provides a reasonably accessible explanation of what he and his team are doing and what it means. In other words, you don't need an advanced degree in biology to enjoy the book.
The findings about our nearest relative are interesting and surprising. You have probably read about the results in the popular press, but I won't spoil the results.
It's also interesting to hear about the behind the scenes struggles as Svante and his team try to gain access to bones, and worry about other, less careful, scientists beating them to the punch.
Overall, the book was highly enjoyable, and I will be looking for additional compelling developments as the science advances.
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- The Kindler
- 04-27-16
Interesting but very little about Neanderthals.
I did enjoy the science behind what lead up to the discoveries and the importance of being careful about contamining the DNA. When he threw in information about his sex life of being bisexual and stealing a co-workers wife, I lost interest. No one cares about your sex life. I wish the author stayed focused on the science and didn't give such a personal history of himself. That was really my only complaint, it didn't belong and added nothing to the discoveries he made. I did finish it and thought it was very interesting if a little egotistical at time. I still recommend it but listen to at an increased speed.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Jean
- 04-11-16
A Genetic jigsaw Puzzle
I found this most interesting and fun book to read. It is written in the first person just as if Svanto Paabo was sitting beside the reader telling the story of how he mapped the genome. Some technical information is provided and explained but mostly he tells about himself and his colleagues and their work. They way the book is written keeps the reader engaged and enthralled with the story. The book reads like a memoir rather than a scientific book.
The story starts in 1981, when Paabo, a Swedish graduate student, became obsessed with ancient DNA. He extracted DNA from Egyptian mummies; at that time no one had any idea the desiccated flesh of mummies contained any genetic material. In this book Paabo reveals the three decades of research that led to the mapping of the Neanderthal genome. Toward the end of the book Paabo reveals in passing that he is the secret extramarital son of Sune Bergstrom, a well known biochemist and co-winner of the Nobel Prize.
The book is well written and is easy to read; all scientific technical information is simply explained for the lay person. I learned a lot about the Neanderthal and about DNA from the book as well as the workings of higher education politics. Dennis Holland does a good job narrating the book.
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8 people found this helpful
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- serine
- 02-03-16
Great personal stories in between science
This book provided a lot of technical detail about mtDNA, which was very enjoyable and educational. I am more familiar with nuclear DNA and was happy to gain a more in depth understanding of mtDNA while enjoying a great story. More surprising though was the amount of personal detail shared by the author. I loved his candid and matter-of-fact way of writing about his personal relationships and his interpretation of the politics that accompany academic competition. Great read.
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7 people found this helpful