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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
I won a copy of this book through Goodreads and am so glad I did. I have always been intrigued by other Homo species. This story of Girl and Big Mother, Him, Bent and Runt did not disappoint. The modern-day story was good too if a tad less exciting. I was left wanting more which is a sure sign the book succeeded.
adventurous
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
I can't say I have a lot of things to say about the book. It surely was a window through time and an opportunity to have a closer look to Neanderthals, but overall I don't think it's something that will stick with me for a long time. Also, the ending was nothing like what I expected and even though I understand what was the whole point I still would like some clarifications about the Neanderthal's end of life.
Some meat gets to eat … some meat gets eaten!
Some 40,000 years ago, as the last ice age slowly relinquished its steely grip on the northern hemisphere, the Neanderthal, a separate species of hominid whose DNA, by some estimates, comprises as much as 6% of modern Homo Sapiens DNA, sadly went extinct. Although there is no solid consensus, current wisdom suggests that the reason for the extinction may be as mundane as a population too small and too widely dispersed that ultimately proved non-viable, unable to withstand the difficulties of squeezing through a genetic bottleneck. Today’s forward-thinking anthropologists and paleontologists also regularly incur significant opposition from those who would hold to 19th century cartoonish stereotypes of the Neanderthal as a stooped, primitive, violent brute who lost a war for their place on the planet in a pitched battle against Cro-Magnon, the precursor to today’s modern Homo Sapiens.
Rosamund Gale is a modern, professional scientist – an archeologist who must achieve her place in science in the face of institutional misogyny. She also struggles daily against the opposition to her beliefs in a more modern version of Neanderthal behavior and capabilities, that they are capable, innovative toolmakers with advancing technology, that they have developed a place and value in their lives for cosmetic and physical personal adornment, and that they interacted, mingled and, of course, mated with Cro-Magnon as circumstances allowed or demanded. She also faces the additional harsh demands of a difficult pregnancy and a long-distance relationship with her husband. In her novel, author Cameron portrays Gale as having hit the proverbial archeological mother lode – a burial site that contains female Neanderthal and male Cro-Magnon remains obviously carefully positioned (or perhaps they were positioned by the circumstances of their joint death) to show a strong relationship, perhaps even a permanent loving relationship.
I have a personal preference for interpreting The Last Neanderthal which may not have been the one that Ms Cameron intended when she wrote it. I think that the strength of Ms Gale’s beliefs in her version of a Neanderthal hominid, the emotional depth of those beliefs coupled with the difficulties of her pregnancy, the problems of her absent husband the and the daily opposition to her advancement and achievement by her scientific colleagues led Ms Gale, much like a clairvoyant or a medium, to channel her physical contact with those remains into a detailed imagining of the pathos of the final months of the last Neanderthal female and her erstwhile clan. That the last Neanderthal existed somewhere, sometime, somehow in a post-Ice Age Europe was a logical, unavoidable inevitability.
Gale’s Neanderthal calls herself simply Girl. Her companion, Runt, is a juvenile Cro-Magnon boy perhaps as young as six or seven years old. Girl’s continuing concerns that Runt is sickly or diseased, weak, mal-nourished or underdeveloped and deficient in some fashion make it clear that Girl is entirely unaware of the existence of a second species of hominid with such marked physical differences. Runt and Girl are making the trek to the annual clan gathering at the site of a salmon spawning run where Girl, who has now come into heat and entered puberty, hopes she will find a mate and the opportunity to become the matriarch of her own clan. When no other family clans join her at the site, the reader becomes aware that Girl is now the last Neanderthal.
My initial chagrin at the fact that the end of Girl’s life, in effect the death of the last Neanderthal on earth, and the explanation for the positioning of the bones at the site of Gale’s monumental discovery was not to be forthcoming vanished as I realized that it is likely that Cameron intended leaving things open-ended. The reader closes the book on the final page in exactly the same position as Rosamund Gale. That is, Gale and the reader must conceive their own possible explanations consistent with the evidence offered when, sadly, the bones aren’t able to explain themselves. They just sit there daring the scientific observer to draw conclusions.
When I cracked the binding on The Last Neanderthal and began reading, it was my hope that, like Björn Kurtén’s awesome Dance of the Tiger, Gale would take advantage of the literary license offered by story-telling that was forbidden to her when she was doing her scientific research and put forward her own theory for the demise of the Neanderthal species. In all likelihood, Ms Cameron never intended to do that in the first place but it is the reason that the book paled ever so slightly in my estimation and I withheld that fifth star.
Highly recommended
Paul Weiss
Some 40,000 years ago, as the last ice age slowly relinquished its steely grip on the northern hemisphere, the Neanderthal, a separate species of hominid whose DNA, by some estimates, comprises as much as 6% of modern Homo Sapiens DNA, sadly went extinct. Although there is no solid consensus, current wisdom suggests that the reason for the extinction may be as mundane as a population too small and too widely dispersed that ultimately proved non-viable, unable to withstand the difficulties of squeezing through a genetic bottleneck. Today’s forward-thinking anthropologists and paleontologists also regularly incur significant opposition from those who would hold to 19th century cartoonish stereotypes of the Neanderthal as a stooped, primitive, violent brute who lost a war for their place on the planet in a pitched battle against Cro-Magnon, the precursor to today’s modern Homo Sapiens.
Rosamund Gale is a modern, professional scientist – an archeologist who must achieve her place in science in the face of institutional misogyny. She also struggles daily against the opposition to her beliefs in a more modern version of Neanderthal behavior and capabilities, that they are capable, innovative toolmakers with advancing technology, that they have developed a place and value in their lives for cosmetic and physical personal adornment, and that they interacted, mingled and, of course, mated with Cro-Magnon as circumstances allowed or demanded. She also faces the additional harsh demands of a difficult pregnancy and a long-distance relationship with her husband. In her novel, author Cameron portrays Gale as having hit the proverbial archeological mother lode – a burial site that contains female Neanderthal and male Cro-Magnon remains obviously carefully positioned (or perhaps they were positioned by the circumstances of their joint death) to show a strong relationship, perhaps even a permanent loving relationship.
I have a personal preference for interpreting The Last Neanderthal which may not have been the one that Ms Cameron intended when she wrote it. I think that the strength of Ms Gale’s beliefs in her version of a Neanderthal hominid, the emotional depth of those beliefs coupled with the difficulties of her pregnancy, the problems of her absent husband the and the daily opposition to her advancement and achievement by her scientific colleagues led Ms Gale, much like a clairvoyant or a medium, to channel her physical contact with those remains into a detailed imagining of the pathos of the final months of the last Neanderthal female and her erstwhile clan. That the last Neanderthal existed somewhere, sometime, somehow in a post-Ice Age Europe was a logical, unavoidable inevitability.
Gale’s Neanderthal calls herself simply Girl. Her companion, Runt, is a juvenile Cro-Magnon boy perhaps as young as six or seven years old. Girl’s continuing concerns that Runt is sickly or diseased, weak, mal-nourished or underdeveloped and deficient in some fashion make it clear that Girl is entirely unaware of the existence of a second species of hominid with such marked physical differences. Runt and Girl are making the trek to the annual clan gathering at the site of a salmon spawning run where Girl, who has now come into heat and entered puberty, hopes she will find a mate and the opportunity to become the matriarch of her own clan. When no other family clans join her at the site, the reader becomes aware that Girl is now the last Neanderthal.
My initial chagrin at the fact that the end of Girl’s life, in effect the death of the last Neanderthal on earth, and the explanation for the positioning of the bones at the site of Gale’s monumental discovery was not to be forthcoming vanished as I realized that it is likely that Cameron intended leaving things open-ended. The reader closes the book on the final page in exactly the same position as Rosamund Gale. That is, Gale and the reader must conceive their own possible explanations consistent with the evidence offered when, sadly, the bones aren’t able to explain themselves. They just sit there daring the scientific observer to draw conclusions.
When I cracked the binding on The Last Neanderthal and began reading, it was my hope that, like Björn Kurtén’s awesome Dance of the Tiger, Gale would take advantage of the literary license offered by story-telling that was forbidden to her when she was doing her scientific research and put forward her own theory for the demise of the Neanderthal species. In all likelihood, Ms Cameron never intended to do that in the first place but it is the reason that the book paled ever so slightly in my estimation and I withheld that fifth star.
Highly recommended
Paul Weiss
Lovely story, interesting, and did its job, to make me see Neanderthals as also human. Made me cry twice or three times. Well done!
challenging
hopeful
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Ein im Großen und Ganzen gelungenes Buch, das verdeutlicht, dass die grundlegenden Probleme dieselben sind, ganz gleich, mit welchen Härten man als Frau zu kämpfen hat und in welches Leben man hineingeboren worden ist.
Ich muss allerdings zugeben, dass das Buch an mehreren Stellen sehr heftig war und ich es möglicherweise nicht gelesen hätte, wenn mir das vorher bewusst gewesen wäre.
Ich muss allerdings zugeben, dass das Buch an mehreren Stellen sehr heftig war und ich es möglicherweise nicht gelesen hätte, wenn mir das vorher bewusst gewesen wäre.
I haven't come across many works of fiction that take up a Neanderthal's point of view. I really enjoyed it. Surprisingly, I found it quite touching, and found myself quite sad reading Girl's navigation through a world presumably empty of her kind.
One part that really stuck with me -
We can't really know of the cognition of our evolutionary cousins, but I found it really interesting and sad in a distant, untouchable way, to bend my mind thinking of how something "like me" but "not me" might think. I thought Cameron's way of showing Runt's different use of language in comparison to Girl's and the rest of the family was creative and, I suppose, as 'realistic' as it could get.
I'd give this book another star, but it honestly didn't feel complete.
I didn't find the chapters with Dr. Rose Gale particularly compelling, but that was fine. I still enjoyed the book for a unique point of view, and making me wistful to know the deep lives of extinct hominids.
One part that really stuck with me -
Spoiler
Girl finds herself struggling communicate an idea to Runt, a foundling that is slowly revealed to be a modern human, not a Neanderthal like herself. She thinks on the danger that Runt has provoked by charging at an angry male bear. She wonders how she could communicate a complex lesson to him, about things he ought not do. She can't find it, the way to express something so abstract. Her lessons only go as far as "do" or "do not".We can't really know of the cognition of our evolutionary cousins, but I found it really interesting and sad in a distant, untouchable way, to bend my mind thinking of how something "like me" but "not me" might think. I thought Cameron's way of showing Runt's different use of language in comparison to Girl's and the rest of the family was creative and, I suppose, as 'realistic' as it could get.
I'd give this book another star, but it honestly didn't feel complete.
Spoiler
I feel like Cameron set up this very moving story of two closely related, sapient species meeting, but didn't answer the essential question that characters throughout the book were asking: how'd they end up dying together like that?I didn't find the chapters with Dr. Rose Gale particularly compelling, but that was fine. I still enjoyed the book for a unique point of view, and making me wistful to know the deep lives of extinct hominids.
Really loved this. Clever setup and poignant little moments everywhere. Escaped five stars because of the ending--though adequately conclusive, it felt abrupt. I could have easily kept reading this another 100 pages.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
informative
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No