[2] Following her Ph.D, Wragg Sykes was awarded a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship at Université de Bordeaux, working in the PACEA laboratory on Neanderthal and prehistoric sites in the Massif Central mountains.

[18][19][20] Yuval Noah Harari, author of the bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, thought Wragg Sykes had done "a remarkable job synthesizing thousands of academic studies into a single accessible narrative".

[17] Alice Roberts, author and presenter of the television series The Incredible Human Journey, said it was "a wonderful portrait of these enigmatic, long-lost relatives".

[10] Writing in The Sunday Times about the best philosophy and ideas books of the year 2020, James McConnachie praised how it reveals the latest theories about Neanderthal life, from the tools they used to the funerals they performed.

[23] In 2013, Wragg Sykes started, together with other female scientists, the TrowelBlazers project, a public-led experiment in participatory archaeology, originating from the lack of visibility of women in science.