After the Ice covers
human prehistory from 20,000 BC to 5,000 BC. This extends from the
Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), covers the initial warming after the end
of the Ice Age, the cold spike of the Younger Dryas, and the return
of the warming trend.
Beyond the obvious
warming and a vague fuzzy awareness of hunter-gathering giving way to
farming, my knowledge of this sort of period was minimal at best.
It’s a global book,
looking at every continent on Earth and charting, in some cases, the
arrival of mankind (in the Americas), and the development of man,
which varied quite a lot. It’s intriguing to see the differing
advance of technology and the earliest establishment of towns (in the
Middle East/Mesopotamia), and the intermediate phase between
hunter-gathering and Neolithic farming that happened in Europe and
elsewhere (the Mesolithic).
As interesting were
common features, particularly cave art and the use of stone (mostly
flint and obsidian).
The author’s approach
was to combine a straightforward archaeological summary with the
practical implications, telling these through plausible vignettes of
an unseen time traveller, John Lubbock (named after a Victorian who
wrote a related book), as he visits various places and times to see
how people lived.
The book is quite
large, just over 500 pages (beyond which lies the index etc), and
later on some of the less distinctive places/locations do blend into
one another somewhat.
The epilogue was very
interesting, and I liked the credible alternative perspectives on GM
crops (essentially, it could bugger biodiversity and cause
extinctions, or cure world hunger) and other matters. Throughout the
book there’s a general open-minded approach that avoids imposing a
single view when there are plausible options or a lack of evidence.
Thaddeus
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