Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 9, 1993                   TAG: 9305090241
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: F4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Reviewed by GEOFF SEAMANS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHO WERE THE NEANDERTALS?

In August 1856, workmen quarrying limestone caves in the Neander Valley (or Thal, in 19th-century German spelling; Tal, in 20th-century) near Dusseldorf discovered what the foreman thought were the fossilized bones of a cave bear.

He took them to Johann Karl Fuhlrott, a local schoolteacher. At the time, Darwin's "Origin of Species" had yet to be published, and the few hominid fossils thus far discovered differed little from the anatomies of modern humans. Nevertheless, Fuhlrott correctly identified the fossils as old (modern dating techniques put their age at about 40,000 years), and - despite the size, sloped skull, brow ridge and massive jaw - more human than not.

The fascinating story of what's happened since is detailed by Erik Trinkaus, a world-class anthropologist and professor at the University of New Mexico, and Pat Shipman, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Their book sets a standard for science writing for the general reader. It is neither condescending nor inaccessible. Anecdote is interwoven with explication. Theories are outlined, and the reasons for their (often) ultimate rejection by the scientific community explained, in a way comprehensible to laymen.

Of course, Trinkaus and Shipman have great material to work with. Subsequent fossil discoveries throughout the Old World (no Neandertal fossils have turned up in the Americas) have given scholars much more knowledge - but not enough to remove the mysteries about the Neandertals for modern humans. Over the decades, the discipline of physical anthropology has attracted more than its share of colorful characters.

And who, specialist or no, couldn't be intrigued by such still-unresolved problems as whether the Neandertals, so like us yet so different, were our forebears or were cousins who met an evolutionary dead end?

As Trinkaus and Shipman make clear, the various interpretations over time of the Neandertal fossil record have tended to hinge as much on the unrecognized assumptions and presuppositions of the interpreters as on the evidence itself. It is a difficulty, the authors also acknowledge, to which today's scientists - themselves included - are no less susceptible.

Still, simply recognizing the likelihood is a step forward. And since World War II, the study of the Neandertals and other early humans has been made more sophisticated by the use of interdisciplinary investigative tools. Where once it was the province principally of anatomical anthropologists, it now makes use of the insights of geology, archaeology, meteorology, genetics, environmental biology and molecular biology.

All that firepower will perhaps someday provide more certain answers about who the Neandertals were, how they lived and what became of them.

Geoff Seamans is associate editor of this newspaper's editorial page.