Café Neandertal

January 23, 2017
Bahrami (Café Oc), an anthropologist and travel writer, explores the Dordogne region of France, as well as northwestern Spain, seeking clues to the lives of the prehistoric humans who inhabited the region. She imparts the electrifying sensation of handling dirt, stones, and bones, and their fleeting connections to the humans who occupied these areas some 70,000 years ago. With a pilgrim’s reverence and a scientist’s exactitude, Bahrami captures the textures, smells, and sounds of the excavation sites and adjacent towns. Melding science reporting and travelogue, she chats with internationally renowned anthropologists about the rituals of the hearth, hunt, and burial; mingles with the locals over aperitifs; attempts to perfect her flint-knapping skills; partners with researchers to dig and scrape; and dutifully explains the importance of every find, down to the smallest ancient tooth and coprolite. She writes a great deal about local wine, herbed snails, and wild mushroom cream sauces consumed over hearty debates about the Neandertal diet and way of life—and the evidence in the soil showing them to be in ways more adaptable, innovative, and less rigid-thinking than modern Homo sapiens. At the heart of this story is Bahrami’s trek through densely overgrown pre-historic territory in search of a visceral connection to and deeper understanding of all humankind.

February 1, 2017
Memoir of a food-and-travel journalist who displays her love of archaeology.Bahrami (Historic Walking Guides: Madrid, 2009, etc.) covers events from 2010 to 2015, most of them at the dig at La Ferrassie in France, where seven nearly complete Neanderthal skeletons were found. The author describes her position as "the upstairs-downstairs journalist-crew-anthropologist folded into [a] camp of some thirty quirky, very opinionated, very international, and very bright archaeologists and students as they worked into one of the great mysteries of the human journey on earth." Interviews and informal conversations with these men and women abound as Bahrami picks their brains about their work. Debates center on how much Neanderthals were like modern humans. Did they have language and symbolic thought? Did they participate in rituals, such as burial of the dead? Though Bahrami does not provide all the answers, she effectively portrays the rich atmosphere at a dig. Over good food and drink after a day's work, she talked to the scientists, seeking different perspectives, and she quotes their opinions at length. In addition, she came to know and appreciate the local amateur prehistory experts who are invariably proud of the fact that Neanderthals once thrived in their area. Bahrami's technique results in lots of repetition and some entertaining but extraneous information; however, this is not intended to be a textbook but rather a memoir and an amiable introduction to a bit of prehistory. In one chapter, the author concentrates on what the science of genetics has brought to the study of the migrations out of Africa, to the evolution of modern man, and to our closest kin, the Neanderthals, with whom we share 99.7 percent of our DNA. Written with all the flair and enthusiasm of an experienced writer eager to share her love of her subject.

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Starred review from February 15, 2017
Award-winning writer Bahrami is a delightful guide in this thoroughly enjoyable look into the research and recovery of a group of Neanderthal remains in the French Dordogne region. With a background in archaeology, she is certainly qualified, but her wide interests in travel, memoir, food, wine, and more make this exceedingly engaging title more like a French version of Under the Tuscan Sun (1996) with an origins-of-humanity spin than the expected scholarly tome. Bahrami immerses readers in the countryside where the Neanderthals were found, introduces individuals actively involved in studying them, and takes readers along on the thoroughly modern adventure of understanding who the Neanderthals were, why they disappeared, and how humans are related to them. She also shares her own journey of signing up to write about the Dordogne discoveries and how she found herself quickly becoming consumed by her subject. The story became bigger and bigger, encompassing not only the Neanderthals and those in the field recovering them but also the people of this unusual region. Ultimately, Bahrami determined that the biggest truth of the discovery was that we are all in this together, and it's messy. Welcome to the family. Highly recommended for archaeology and prehistory buffs and armchair travelers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)