Just finished "Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art". As I've written before, it's more technical and detailed than I needed, but interesting. I come away from it, as I did from an earlier book on DNA results from testing homo sapiens from various archaeological sites, knowing the images I grew up with are wrong.
Among the differences what stands out is the variety and mobility of past humans. In the case of Neanderthals they moved a lot, being hunter-gatherers and therefore following the game. Lots of new science in the field, both DNA and other. Tracing tools back to the beds of rock where the stones originated from shows a lot of movement. Looking at the isotopes of minerals in teeth which record diets and locations also show movement.
One of the things harder for me to grasp is the idea that 2 percent of Euro-Asian genes are Neanderthal. I take the scientist word for it, but my mind skitters away from trying to figuring out the steps of the analysis which would reveal that.
Interesting--a footnote reminds that African genomes are richer in variety than Euro-Asian genomes, because of a bottleneck we experienced during the exodus from Africa.
On an unrelated note, except it's mobility, Tom Ricks in a NYTimes book review notes that a Roman captain served both in the Middle East and in England.
