Book picks similar to
Gold and Power in Ancient Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia by Jeffrey Quilter
panama
anthropology
archaeology
colonialism
Meet Me in Atlantis: My Quest to Find the 2,500-Year-Old Sunken City
Mark Adams - 2015
A few years ago, Mark Adams made a strange discovery: Everything we know about the lost city of Atlantis comes from the work of one man, the Greek philosopher Plato. Then he made a second, stranger discovery: Amateur explorers are still actively searching for this sunken city all around the world, based entirely on the clues Plato left behind. Exposed to the Atlantis obsession, Adams decides to track down these people and determine why they believe it’s possible to find the world’s most famous lost city and whether any of their theories could prove or disprove its existence. He visits scientists who use cutting-edge technology to find legendary civilizations once thought to be fictional. He examines the numerical and musical codes hidden in Plato’s writings, and with the help of some charismatic sleuths traces their roots back to Pythagoras, the sixth-century BC mathematician. He learns how ancient societies transmitted accounts of cataclysmic events—and how one might dig out the “kernel of truth” in Plato’s original tale.Meet Me in Atlantis is Adams’s enthralling account of his quest to solve one of history’s greatest mysteries; a travelogue that takes readers to fascinating locations to meet irresistible characters; and a deep, often humorous look at the human longing to rediscover a lost world.
A Strange Kind Of Glory: Sir Matt Busby And Manchester United
Eamon Dunphy - 1991
He is regarded by many as the greatest manager ever, building three brilliant sides with players such as Charlton, Edwards, Law & Best. Originally written just two years before Busby's death, this book is now available with a new introduction.
Lost in the Woods: Syd Barrett and the Pink Floyd
Julian Palacios - 1998
He has now abandoned his past. Through interviews with Barrett's family and friends, this book provides an account of the man and his illness.
The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry
Bryan Sykes - 2001
News of both the Ice Man's discovery and his age, which was put at over five thousand years, fascinated scientists and newspapers throughout the world. But what made Sykes's story particularly revelatory was his successful identification of a genetic descendant of the Ice Man, a woman living in Great Britain today. How was Sykes able to locate a living relative of a man who died thousands of years ago?In The Seven Daughters of Eve, he gives us a firsthand account of his research into a remarkable gene, which passes undiluted from generation to generation through the maternal line. After plotting thousands of DNA sequences from all over the world, Sykes found that they clustered around a handful of distinct groups. Among Europeans and North American Caucasians, there are, in fact, only seven. This conclusion was staggering: almost everyone of native European descent, wherever they may live throughout the world, can trace their ancestry back to one of seven women, the Seven Daughters of Eve.Naming them Ursula, Xenia, Helena, Velda, Tara, Katrine, and Jasmine, Sykes has created portraits of their disparate worlds by mapping the migratory patterns followed by millions of their ancestors. In reading the stories of these seven women, we learn exactly how our origins can be traced, how and where our ancient genetic ancestors lived, and how we are each living proof of the almost indestructible strands of DNA, which have survived over so many thousands of years. Indeed, The Seven Daughters of Eve is filled with dramatic stories: from Sykes's identification, using DNA samples from two living relatives, of the remains of Tsar Nicholas and Tsaress Alexandra, to the Caribbean woman whose family had been sold into slavery centuries before and whose ancestry Sykes was able to trace back to the Eastern coast of central Africa. Ultimately, Sykes's investigation reveals that, as a race, what humans have in common is more deeply embedded than what separates us.
24 Hours in Ancient Athens: A Day in the Life of the People Who Lived There
Philip Matyszak - 2019
See the city through their eyes as it teeters on the edge of the fateful war that would end its golden age.
Athens, 416 BC. A tenuous peace holds. The city-state's political and military might are feared throughout the ancient world; it pushes the boundaries of social, literary and philosophical experimentation in an era when it has a greater concentration of geniuses per capita than at any other time in human history. Yet even geniuses go to the bathroom, argue with their spouse and enjoy a drink with friends.Few of the city's other inhabitants enjoy the benefits of such a civilized society, though - as multicultural and progressive as Athens can be, many are barred from citizenship. No, for the average person, life is about making ends meet, whether that be selling fish, guarding the temple or smuggling lucrative Greek figs.During the course of a day we meet 24 Athenians from all strata of society - from the slave-girl to the councilman, the vase painter to the naval commander, the housewife to the hoplite - and get to know what the real Athens was like by spending an hour in their company. We encounter a different one of these characters every chapter, with each chapter forming an hour in the life of the ancient city. We also get to spy on the daily doings of notable Athenians through the eyes of regular people as the city hovers on the brink of the fateful war that will destroy its golden age.
Cræft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts
Alex Langlands - 2017
Archaeologist and medieval historian Alexander Langlands reaches as far back as the Neolithic period to recover our lost sense of craft, combining deep history with detailed scientific analyses and his own experiences making traditional crafts. Craft brims with vivid storytelling, rich descriptions of natural landscape, and delightful surprises that will convince us to introduce more craft into our lives.
Cold Earth
Sarah Moss - 2009
Excavating the unsettling remains of a Norse society under attack, they also come to uncover some of their own demons, as it becomes apparent that a plague pandemic is sweeping across the planet and communication with the outside world is breaking down. Increasingly unsure whether their missives will ever reach their destination, each of the characters writes a letter to someone close to them, trying to make sense of their situation and expressing their fears and dwindling hope of ever getting back home...In fluid, witty prose, Moss weaves a rich tapestry of personal narratives, history, ghost stories, love stories, stories of grief and naked survival. Through these missives, the author explores themes that are at the very heart of our existence: What do people do in extremis? What do they think when faced with near-certain death? How do the group dynamics shift under such strain?
BEAU TRILOGY (BEAU GESTE, BEAU SABREUR, BEAU IDEAL) & 36 STORIES OF THE FOREIGN LEGION
P.C. Wren - 2010
At the beginning of the first novel, French Legionnaires find one of their fortresses manned by dead men. Who could have done it? A flashback unravels the mystery of the three English Geste brothers. A classic, rip-roaring tale of adventure... This volume also contains 36 short stories of the Foreign Legion, grouped in four well known collection (now in one volume!): STEPSONS OF FRANCE Ten Little Legionaries A la Ninon de L'Enclos An Officer and--a Liar The Deserter Five Minutes "Here are Ladies" The MacSnorrt "Belzébuth" The Quest Moonshine The Coward of the Legion Mahdev Rao The Merry Liars GOOD GESTES What's in a Name A Gentleman of Colour David and His Incredible Jonathan The McSnorrt Reminiscent Buried Treasure If Wishes were Horses The Devil and Digby Geste The Mule Presentiments Dreams Come True PORT O' MISSING MEN The Return of Odo Klemens The Betrayal of Odo Klemens The Life of Odo Klemens Moon-rise Moon-shadows Moon-set FLAWED BLADES No. 187017 Bombs Mastic--and Drastic The Death Post E Tenebris Nemesis The Hunting of Henri
Flintknapping: Making and Understanding Stone Tools
John C. Whittaker - 1993
In this new guide, John C. Whittaker offers the most detailed handbook on flintknapping currently available and the only one written from the archaeological perspective of interpreting stone tools as well as making them.Flintknapping contains detailed, practical information on making stone tools. Whittaker starts at the beginner level and progresses to discussion of a wide range of techniques. He includes information on necessary tools and materials, as well as step-by-step instructions for making several basic stone tool types. Numerous diagrams allow the reader to visualize the flintknapping process, and drawings of many stone tools illustrate the discussions and serve as models for beginning knappers.Written for a wide amateur and professional audience, Flintknapping will be essential for practicing knappers as well as for teachers of the history of technology, experimental archaeology, and stone tool analysis.
Casuals: Football, Fighting & Fashion: The Story of a Terrace Cult
Phil Thornton - 2003
But by the late Seventies, a new youth fashion had appeared in Britain. Its adherents were often linked to violent football gangs, wore designer sportswear and made the bootboys of previous years look like the dinosaurs they were. They were known as scallies, Perry Booys, trendies and dressers. But the name that stuck was Casuals. And this grassroots phenomenon, largely ignored by the media, was to change the face of both British fashion and international style. Casuals recounts how the working-class fascination with sharp dressing and sartorial one-upmanship crystallized the often bitter rivalries of the hooligan crews and how their culture spread across the terraces, clubs and beyond. It is the definitive book for football, music and fashion obsessives alike.
Finders Keepers: A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession
Craig Childs - 2010
We visit lonesome desert canyons and fancy Fifth Avenue art galleries, journey throughout the Americas, Asia, the past and the present. The result is a brilliant book about man and nature, remnants and memory, a dashing tale of crime and detection.
Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind
Sue Black - 2020
Our stories are marbled into their marrow.Drawing upon her years of research and a wealth of remarkable experience, the world-renowned forensic anthropologist Professor Dame Sue Black takes us on a journey of revelation. From skull to feet, via the face, spine, chest, arms, hands, pelvis and legs, she shows that each part of us has a tale to tell. What we eat, where we go, everything we do leaves a trace, a message that waits patiently for months, years, sometimes centuries, until a forensic anthropologist is called upon to decipher it.Some of this information is easily understood, some holds its secrets tight and needs scientific cajoling to be released. But by carefully piecing together the evidence, the facts of a life can be rebuilt. Limb by limb, case by case – some criminal, some historical, some unaccountably bizarre – Sue Black reconstructs with intimate sensitivity and compassion the hidden stories in what we leave behind.
Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia
Christina Thompson - 2019
For more than a millennium, Polynesians have occupied the remotest islands in the Pacific Ocean, a vast triangle stretching from Hawaii to New Zealand to Easter Island. Until the arrival of European explorers they were the only people to have ever lived there. Both the most closely related and the most widely dispersed people in the world before the era of mass migration, Polynesians can trace their roots to a group of epic voyagers who ventured out into the unknown in one of the greatest adventures in human history.How did the earliest Polynesians find and colonize these far-flung islands? How did a people without writing or metal tools conquer the largest ocean in the world? This conundrum, which came to be known as the Problem of Polynesian Origins, emerged in the eighteenth century as one of the great geographical mysteries of mankind.For Christina Thompson, this mystery is personal: her Maori husband and their sons descend directly from these ancient navigators. In Sea People, Thompson explores the fascinating story of these ancestors, as well as those of the many sailors, linguists, archaeologists, folklorists, biologists, and geographers who have puzzled over this history for three hundred years. A masterful mix of history, geography, anthropology, and the science of navigation, Sea People combines the thrill of exploration with the drama of discovery in a vivid tour of one of the most captivating regions in the world.Sea People includes an 8-page photo insert, illustrations throughout, and 2 endpaper maps.
The Lifers' Club
Francis Pryor - 2014
Most of the sites he dug were ahead of industrial development or new housing estates, gravel quarries, roads, etc. The people who did the work were down-to-earth. Some were students, others were professional diggers – but they all knew what they wanted from life and were prepared to work long hours, for very low pay. In the seventies to nineties, Alan and his colleagues lived in abandoned houses or camped out on the edges of industrial estates. They were always covered in mud, were deeply suntanned and drunk (or stoned) on their days off. They were feared by respectable citizens. They were known as Circuit Diggers because they worked the 'circuit', moving from one excavation to another, as new sites were opened, right across Britain.Like others on the circuit, Alan Cadbury is obsessive: he won’t let problems lie, even when he’s slumped drunk in a lonely bedsit, somewhere in the Fens. But there’s another side to him, too: he enjoyes solving mysteries. In the late ‘90s he helped to give a forensic archaeology course and there met Richard Lane, now a senior detective in the Leicestershire force. DCI Lane helps him tackle new cases. But this is his first big one: it involves an 'honour killing', which happened eight years ago in Leicester. Most of the action takes place in the Fens, where Alan has lived all his life. It’s a dark tale of past wrong-doing and modern criminality – on a very large scale. And it’s not without violence and rapid action. Alan’s life may be harsh and at times unpleasant, but it’s not likely to be very long, either.
The Original Australians: Story of the Aboriginal People
Josephine Flood - 2006
From the wisdom and paintings of the Dreamtime, to the first contacts between Europeans and indigenous Australians, right through to modern times, it offers an insight into the life and experiences of the world's oldest culture. The resilience and adaptability of Aboriginal people over millennia is one of the great human stories of all time.Josephine Flood answers the questions about Aboriginal Australia that Australians and visitors often ask: Where did the Aborigines come from and when? How did they survive in such a harsh environment? What was the traditional role of Aboriginal women? Why didn't colonists sign treaties with Aboriginal people? Were Aboriginal children 'stolen'? Why are there so many problems in Aboriginal communities today? And many more.This rich account aims to understand both black and white perspectives and is fascinating reading for anyone who wants to discover Aboriginal Australia.Another enthralling account by Josephine Flood, of Australian Aborigines! Her ensuring respect for her fellow humans underwrites every part of her exploration of the life and times of the Aboriginal people.Pat O'Shane, MagistrateThis is an up-to-the-minute and balanced account of Aboriginal experience from earliest prehistory to today. Clearly written and well-illustrated, this is the best book to give someone who wants to know about Aborigines, their survival through the millennia, and the experiences they have to contribute to modern Australia.Emeritus Professor Campbell Macknight, Australian National University