Close Encounters with Humankind, Sang-Hee Lee

Received to review via Netgalley; publication date 20th February 2018

Close Encounters with Humankind is a sort of compendium of various questions about hominid ancestors. It doesn’t try to tackle things chronologically or systematically. Instead, it poses interesting questions — are there cannibals in the line of human descent? How much of a Neanderthal am I? — and then tries to answer them with the best of what we know at the moment. Sometimes the answers aren’t entirely satisfactory or complete, because the evidence isn’t there (yet, or perhaps ever; behaviour, after all, does not fossilise).

It’s a pretty good tour through some interesting topics, although if you’re already interested in this sort of thing, you may well find that there’s nothing much new here for you. But if that knowledge is a bit cursory or out of date, this’d probably be perfect.

Rating: 3/5