Kindred Quotes

“We should perhaps ask why the idea of enthusiastic partners driven by desire and even emotional attachment is regarded as more of a fairy tale than other explanations.”
― Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

“his feet dance as the un-made deer arrive on many shoulders, haloed by puffed breath in the frigid air. No matter the cold, tonight all will sleep warmed by blood.”
― Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

“Average Neanderthal leg-to-arm strength ratios were even greater than cross-country competitors running 160km (100mi.) per week.”
― Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

“Let’s finish our shared journey through these pages by letting your guard down. Push against the impossible, and perform a quantum shift back in time to the Pleistocene. Close your eyes and pick a world: a grassy plain under cool winter sun; a warm forest track, soft loam underfoot; or a now-sunken rocky coast, gulls’ cries salting the air. Now listen, step forward, she’s here […]Neanderthal. Human. Kindred.”
― Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

“Amid ancient surfaces densely spangled by myriad artefacts, fireplaces are like archaeological wormholes, bridging the impossible chasms of time separating us from long-vanished dwellers. ”
― Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

“Look through shadows, listen beyond echoes; they have much to tell. Not only of other ways to be human, but new eyes to see ourselves. The most glorious thing about the Neanderthals is that they belong to all of us, and they're no dead-end, past-tense phenomenon. They are right here. In my hands typing and your brain understanding my words. Read on, and meet your kindred.”
― Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

“Landscapes for Neanderthals therefore weren’t abstract spaces, but a continuous flow of lived encounters, both new and remembered. This is a kind of history, which would have been soaked up from childhood through attention and probably direct communication. But places are something more, their meaning manifesting through slow accretion over time of custom and memory.”
― Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

“By 20,000 years ago, we were alone on the surface of this planet. Nonetheless, the Neanderthals still lived, after a fashion. Even as our encounters fell out of all memory, our blood and our babies still contain the fruits of interactions with the universe’s other experiments in being human.”
― Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art