anthropology

Book review – Living on Earth: Life, Consciousness and the Making of the Natural World

7-minute read
keywords: anthropology, evolution, neurobiology, philosophy

In 2016, scuba-diving philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith made a huge splash with his book Other Minds in which he explored the evolutionary origins of a mind quite unlike ours, that of the octopus. In 2020, he followed this up with the altogether more cerebral Metazoa in which he explored the evolution of animal minds more broadly. I reviewed both books favourably. Now, another four years later, Living on Earth is presented retrospectively as the conclusion to this trilogy exploring the origins of intelligence. In a book that is never less than thoughtful, Godfrey-Smith examines how life shapes, and has been shaped by, its environment.

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Book review – Cro-Magnon: The Story of the Last Ice Age People of Europe

6-minute read
keywords: anthropology,  archeology, human evolution

During the Last Ice Age, Europe was home to groups of hunter-gatherers that were virtually indistinguishable from humans alive today. Commonly known as Cro-Magnons, they seem to have overlapped in time with Neandertals, even exchanging genetic material with them. Who were these people and what do we know about them? Palaeoanthropologist Trenton Holliday has studied the ice age Europeans for the last 30 years and in this, his first book for a popular audience, he gives you a detailed picture of their lives as it played out over some 30,000 years.

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Book review – The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

10-minute read
keywords: anthropology, archeology, history

Every few years, it seems, there is a new bestselling Big History book. And not infrequently, they have rather grandiose titles. Who does not remember Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years or Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind? But equally often, these books rapidly show their age and are criticized for oversimplifying matters. And so I found myself with The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, a 692-page brick with an equally grandiose title. In what follows, I hope to convince you why I think this book will stand the test of time better.

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Book review – Jungle: How Tropical Forests Shaped the World – and Us

7-minute read
keywords: archeology, botany, environmental history

We often think of tropical forests as pristine wilderness, untouched by human hands. In Jungle, archaeologist Patrick Roberts shows otherwise. A wealth of research reveals a long and entwined history that saw cities and agriculture flourish in this habitat, while later brutal colonial exploitation underlies many of today’s inequalities and environmental problems. Though revisionist and confrontational in tone, Jungle is a breath of fresh air by not falling for simple narratives. Instead, it retains a welcome dose of nuance and willingness to acknowledge complexity.

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Book review – Being a Human: Adventures in 40,000 Years of Consciousness

9-minute read
keywords: anthropology, history

In Being a Human, Charles Foster attempts to inhabit three past eras to find out first-hand how humans came to be who they are. He lives like an Upper Palaeolithic hunter–gatherer, an early farmer in the Neolithic, and he briefly visits the Enlightenment—or so we are promised. When I received this book, I was, admittedly, slightly unsure. Any attempt to live like past humans, especially hunter–gatherers, is fraught with difficulties as so many things have irrevocably changed: the flora and fauna, the landscape, the knowledge most of us have gained (you cannot really unsee germ theory) but also lost (who here can kill and prepare an animal or make a fire without modern tools?), or the fact that we lived in large communal groups. When the flap text also mentions shamanic journeys I was fearing the worst: am I about to witness yet another affluent man’s mid-life crisis?

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Book review – Worlds in Shadow: Submerged Lands in Science, Memory and Myth

7-minute read
keywords: anthropology, earth sciences

Long before we developed writing, humans communicated information across generations by telling stories. Professor of Oceanic Geoscience Patrick Nunn contends that some of these record actual environmental changes that impacted our ancestors. Scientists interested in the rather obscure discipline of geomythology argue that, when studied carefully, such oral histories can be an additional source of data to help us reconstruct past climates and understand their impact. Supremely absorbing, Worlds in Shadow covers a wider range of topics than Nunn’s previous books, making this of interest to a broader audience.

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Book review – The Sediments of Time: My Lifelong Search for the Past

6-minute read

In the field of palaeoanthropology, one name keeps turning up: the Leakey dynasty. Since Louis Leakey’s first excavations in 1926, three generations of this family have been involved in anthropological research in East Africa. In this captivating memoir, Meave, a second-generation Leakey, reflects on a lifetime of fieldwork and research and provides an inspirational blueprint for what women can achieve in science.

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Book review – Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind

6-minute read

When thinking of human ancestors, the name “Lucy” will likely come to mind. But a dedicated team of scientists spent decades labouring on the discovery of a species more than a million years older still, at 4.4 million years of age. Nicknamed “Ardi” and classified as Ardipithecus ramidus, it was finally revealed to the world in 2009. For a full decade, journalist Kermit Pattison immersed himself in the story of Ardi’s discovery to bring to life both the science and the scientists. The resulting Fossil Men is an incredibly well-researched book that tells the definitive insider’s story of how one of the most divisive fossils in palaeoanthropology was discovered by one of its most divisive characters: Tim White.

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Book review – Ancient Bones: Unearthing the Astonishing New Story of How We Became Human

7-minute read

Where do humanity’s evolutionary roots lie? The answer has long been “in Africa”, but this idea is being challenged from various sides. I previously reviewed Begun’s The Real Planet of the Apes as a warming-up exercise before delving into this book. My conclusion was that its discussion of archaic ape evolution, although proposing that species moved back and forth between Africa and Eurasia, ultimately did not really challenge the Out of Africa hypothesis. Not so Ancient Bones. German palaeontologist Madeleine Böhme, With the help of two co-authors, journalists Rüdiger Braun and Florian Breier, firmly challenges the established narrative in an intriguing book that is as outspoken as it is readable.

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Book review – The Real Planet of the Apes: A New Story of Human Origins

7-minute read

The history of human evolution has become firmly wedded to the Out of Africa hypothesis: the idea that we evolved in Africa and from there spread around the world. Back in 2015, palaeoanthropologist David R. Begun gave the proverbial tree of life a firm shake with The Real Planet of the Apes, making the case that the picture is a bit more complicated than that. Providing an incredibly well-written overview of the deep evolutionary history of great apes and humans, an interesting picture emerges of species moving into and out of Africa over time. Some reviewers hailed it as provocative—but is it really?

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