Danny Vendramini has had successful careers as a theatre director, international award-winning film director and scriptwriter. Since 1999, he has devoted his attention to theoretical biology, specialising in the evolution of behaviour and human origins. He lives in Sydney and is married to the writer Rosie Scott.
Put aside everything you thought you knew about Neanderthals. Evolutionary detective Danny Vendramini’s meticulous research shows they were not docile omnivores, but savage, cannibalistic carnivores: the ‘apex predators’ of the stone age. And everything else—including humans—was their prey.
Vendramini’s Neanderthal predation theory argues that the evolution of modern humans—including our unique physiology, sexuality and human nature–is the result of systematic long-term sexual predation and cannibalism by Eurasian Neanderthals.
Neanderthal predation theory is one of those groundbreaking concepts that revolutionises scientific thinking. It represents a quantum leap in our understanding of human origins.
“Sometimes it takes an outsider to cut through the most intractable problems in science. That is what Vendramini’s approach offers the reader in his daring claims about the interactions between humans and their most famous evolutionary relatives, the Neanderthals.”
Professor Iain Davidson, Australian Studies, Harvard University, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology, University of New England
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“Danny Vendramini presents a truly unique and innovative picture of the role of Neandertal predation in human evolution… Vendramini pulls together countless different threads of scientific evidence to re-cast Neandertals as “apex predators”, proverbial “wolves with knives” who were effective rivals with our ancestors... It has been a long time since I read a book about human evolution that I enjoyed so much.”
Professor John Shea, Stony Brook University, New York
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“We’ve been called the ‘third chimpanzee’. Instead, Vendramini asks: Why are we such a distinctively odd primate species— anatomically, behaviourally, and beset by dark atavistic fears?
His thesis that intensive predation by Neanderthals enforced rapid, protective, evolutionary changes offers innovative insight into the many things about ‘us’ that we might otherwise take for granted. A well-argued case to be answered.”
Professor Tony McMichael, Australian National University
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“This book could, hopefully will, bring about revolutionary and productive changes in our understanding of human nature.”
Dr. Andrew Bell, author of Creative Health
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"Vendramini gives a significant hypothesis that is well buttressed with evidence, much of it drawn from the existing literature. It is a sound argument, well argued, and it should be more widely known and considered.”
Phillip Ellis,AustralianReader.com 23RD. November 2010
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A BOLD HYPOTHESIS
"In reading this book, I could not help but think of Alfred Wegener's hypothesis of Continental Drift, put forward in 1915. Wegener's hypothesis was scorned by many at the time and it was not until the 1960s, with the understanding of plate tectonics, that an underlying mechanism to support his hypothesis was provided. Vendramini' provides a similarly bold hypothesis about human origins."
Ian Keese, ISAA Review, Vol 10, 1. 2011
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"A daring, possibly revolutionizing theory, well-reasoned and well researched."
Professor Johan van der Dennen, author of 'The Origins of War'
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"A thought provoking outside-the-square theory which may or may not ruffle the feathers of the scientific establishment".
Palaeontologist, Dr Ben McHenry, South Australian Museum
Kardoorair Press, the Australian publisher of Danny Vendramini’s Them+Us have a website where you can read reviews, purchase a printed copy and check out the feedback. Lots of info http://www.themandus.org/
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Go to Youtube to check out Danny Vendramini’s 15min doco, Neanderthal: Profile of a super predator http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZbmywzGAVs
Coming in 2012 is Danny Vendramini’s The Second Evolution proposes a major rethink of NeoDarwinian theory. He proposes a second evolutionary process exists which he calls teemosis and which emerged to regulate the inheritance of emotions, innate behaviors and instincts in multicellular animals. It’s the first unified theory of evolution since Darwin’s Origin of Species. Visit the website: http://www.thesecondevolution.com