Stranger than Fiction

I am extremely interested in the Neanderthals, so I’ll read any book that gives me more information about them. I’ve already written a review of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art (post of February 24, 2022) and The Neanderthals Rediscovered (post of February 3, 2023). I recently read The Smart Neanderthal: Bird catching, cave art & the cognitive revolution by Clive Finlayson, 2019, and learned a fascinating aspect of the Neanderthals that I hadn’t read in other books. The book is appropriate for the category Science for the 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge . Finlayson is a zoologist and a paleontologist, as well as the Director of the Gibraltar Museum. This book is based on his excavations of Gorham’s Cave in Gibraltar, which is believed to be the last known site of the Neanderthals. He explains that his two scientific passions are the study of birds and of Neanderthals, and his research shows that these two passions are closely connected. Discoveries about th...