Smug Homo sapiens have long looked down on Neanderthals, like city folk sneering at country cousins. Snort. You couldn’t even not go extinct. But these hominins have always gotten a bad rap, and Rebecca Wragg Sykes’s affectionate synthesis of a revolution in scientific understanding shows just how bad. Rather than dimwitted brutes, Neanderthals were human beings whose brains were as big or bigger than ours, who ranged from the British Isles to the Chinese border to the deserts of Arabia, who created sophisticated stone tools and developed complex adhesives such as birch tar, and who lived successfully in an ever-changing climate for more than three hundred thousand years. Oh, and interbred with Sapiens to the extent that two to three percent of our genes come from them. These people were smart, adaptable, and clever, and while there are plenty of lessons to be found in their experience (and extinction), the Kindred message that lingers longest is respect. Way overdue respect.