Though he writes movingly about the psychological scars of poverty, this book lacks the anthropological research and in-depth analysis that distinguished its predecessor.
Right up until the middle of the twentieth century the accepted anthropological view of the Neandertal was that he was dim, stooped, shuffling, and simian-the quintessential caveman.
According to some anthropological evidence, this also meant that our jaws shrank, but the number of teeth we had stayed the same, leading to the orthodontic woes of today.
Anthropological linguists examine the relationship between a culture and its language, the way cultures and languages have changed over time, and how different cultures and languages are related to one another.
More recent anthropological work suggests that gathering, fishing, and small game hunting – all of which were also performed by women – played a much larger role in providing food in these societies.
The range of human foods is not just a source of epicurean joy but a reflection of ecological and anthropological variety -- the consequence of tens of thousands of years of parallel yet independent cultural evolution.
What we can say for sure is that these papers are more evidence in an ongoing anthropological puzzle, and we should keep revising our ideas of exactly when, where, and how we first evolved.