CAFE NEANDERTAL

Travel and archaeology writer Beebe Bahrami takes readers into the thick of an excavation, digs neck-deep in Neandertal dirt, and offers a seat in the front row of the heated debates about our long-lost cousins, as she follows and participates in the stories of those who are doing some of the most comprehensive and global work to date on research, exploration and recovery of our ancient ancestors.

This is a travel narrative in pursuit of an ancient mystery, a journey into the clues, evidences, geographies, and theories of the Neanderthals, following a core team of archaeologists who come together annually in southwestern France’s Dordogne region, a place easily called Neanderthal Central or, given its penchant for the good life from prehistory to the present, Café Neandertal.

The book is also a detective story, investigating one of the biggest mysteries of prehistory and archaeology: Who were the Neandertals? Why did they disappear some 30,000 years ago? And more mysteriously, what light do they shed on us moderns?

Beebe Bahrami is known for award-winning travel, memoir, archaeology, outdoors and adventure, food and wine, spiritual, and cross-cultural writing. Author of The Spiritual Traveler Spain, her work appears in Archaeology, Wine Enthusiast, National Geographicbooks, and Michelin Green Guides, among others.