Book picks similar to
Ancestral Geographies of the Neolithic: Landscapes, Monuments and Memory by Mark Edmonds
prehistory
archaeology
history-anthropology-related
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Min europeiska familj: De senaste 54 000 åren
Karin Bojs - 2015
As part of the healing process, she decided to use DNA research to learn more about herself, her family, and the interconnectedness of society. She went deep in search of her genealogy, having her DNA sequenced and tested, and effectively becoming an experimental subject. Remarkably, she was able to trace the path of her ancestors through recorded history and into prehistory. Through the course of her research, she met dozens of scientists working in genetic research. The narrative travels the length and breadth of Europe, from the Neanderthals of central Germany to the Cro-Magnon in France. Bojs visited the ancient caves, realizing that her direct ancestors must have been living in the area when the cave art was painted. A second DNA analysis later revealed she has Sami (i.e. Lapp) genetic material in her genome, and there were further revelations about her hunter-gatherer, Bronze-Age, and Iron-Age relatives, including the Vikings. This fresh, first-person exploration of genes and genetics goes well beyond personal genealogy and reveals much about the shared history of European peoples.
The Last Neanderthal
Claire Cameron - 2017
Girl, the oldest daughter, is coming of age and her family is determined to travel to the meeting place to find her a mate. But the unforgiving landscape takes its toll, and Girl is left alone to care for Runt, a foundling. As Girl and Runt face the coming winter, Girl realizes she has one chance to save her people, at great cost to herself.In the present, archaeologist Rosamund Gale works well into her pregnancy, racing to excavate newly found Neanderthal artifacts before her baby arrives. Linked across the ages by the shared experience of birth and early motherhood, and inspired by the recent discovery that many modern humans have inherited DNA from Neanderthals, Girl's story and Rosamund's story examines the often taboo corners of women's lives.
The Third Horseman: Climate Change and the Great Famine of the 14th Century
William Rosen - 2014
It didn’t stop anywhere in north Europe until August. Next came the four coldest winters in a millennium. Two separate animal epidemics killed nearly 80 percent of northern Europe’s livestock. Wars between Scotland and England, France and Flanders, and two rival claimants to the Holy Roman Empire destroyed all remaining farmland. After seven years, the combination of lost harvests, warfare, and pestilence would claim six million lives—one eighth of Europe’s total population. William Rosen draws on a wide array of disciplines, from military history to feudal law to agricultural economics and climatology, to trace the succession of traumas that caused the Great Famine. With dramatic appearances by Scotland’s William Wallace, and the luckless Edward II and his treacherous Queen Isabella, history’s best documented episode of catastrophic climate change comes alive, with powerful implications for future calamities.
The Cat's Pajamas
Soraya May - 2017
When she stopped running, she found herself on the other side of the world in a little town called Cable Bay, New Zealand. Now she runs a bar, and tells herself that living up to people’s expectations is overrated. Archaeologist Ryan Sanders has never settled anywhere. Travelling the world, he thinks that settling down is for little people who can’t see beyond their own front door. When he’s sent to investigate a report of fossils discovered in Cable Bay, he thinks it’ll be simple; done in a few days, and then on to the next job. Problem is, the fossils are directly underneath Cat’s bar, and she’s not about to see it demolished without a fight. Sometimes it takes digging up the past to open your eyes to the future.‘The Cat’s Pajamas’ is an 80K romantic comedy with a little bit of steam, a cast of quirky characters, and a guaranteed HEA!
1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed
Eric H. Cline - 2014
The pharaoh's army and navy defeated them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations. Eric Cline tells the gripping story of how the end was brought about by multiple interconnected failures, ranging from invasion and revolt to earthquakes, drought, famine, and the cutting of international trade routes. Bringing to life a vibrant multicultural world, he draws a sweeping panorama of the empires of the age and shows that it may have been their very interdependence that hastened their dramatic collapse. Now revised and updated, 1177 B.C. sheds light on the complex ties that gave rise to, and eventually destroyed, the flourishing civilizations of the Late Bronze Age--and set the stage for the emergence of classical Greece and, ultimately, our world today.
Raven's Choice
Harper Swan - 2014
Her own survival soon becomes doubtful when the band’s leader threatens to cast her out onto the steppe for what he sees as dangerous willfulness. Raven feels an unexpected empathy for the mysterious Neanderthal. But while trying to preserve his life and health, will she go so far as to commit what could be the worst error of her own life? Mark Hayek will never find out that Raven faced a frightening dilemma. But if he did know, he would understand that the present reality exists because of choices made in the past. As meticulously researched as Jean Auel’s Earth Children series but with the benefit of recent discoveries, this novella is an updated story revealing how contact between Neanderthals and Early Humans had surprising results.
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
David Graeber - 2021
Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself.Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what's really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume.The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action.
Wave of Destruction: The Stories of Four Families and History's Deadliest Tsunami
Erich Krauss - 2005
Wandering around the wreckage in a contamination suit, trying to deliver food and water, he found survivors desperate to tell him what their village had been like and how their lives had been changed forever. In Wave of Destruction, Krauss shares the pain and privation of four villagers who made it through alive only to bury their family and friends.Beginning with their fight for life as a 40-foot wave crashed down upon their community, and ending with their slow, confusing quest to rebuild after the last of the bodies had been buried, Krauss unveils the actions and thoughts of ordinary people who were forced to brave extraordinary circumstances. Much like John Hersey did in his acclaimed book Hiroshima, Krauss, a gifted writer and expert in Thai culture, allows the reader to experience one of the worst disasters the world has ever known—through the eyes of those who will never be able to forget.
Daughters of Isis: Women of Ancient Egypt
Joyce A. Tyldesley - 1991
They could own and trade in property, work outside the home, marry foreigners and live alone without the protection of a male guardian. Some of them even rose to rule Egypt as ‘female kings’. Joyce Tyldesley’s vivid history of how women lived in ancient Egypt weaves a fascinating picture of daily life – marriage and the home, work and play, grooming and religion – viewed from a female perspective, in a work that is engaging, original and constantly surprising.
A Short History of Humanity: A New History of Old Europe
Johannes Krause - 2019
Krause is a pioneer in the revolutionary new science of archaeogenetics, archaeology augmented by revolutionary DNA sequencing technology, which has allowed scientists to uncover a new version of human history reaching back more than 100,000 years. Using this technology to re-examine human bones from the distant past, Krause has been able to map not only the genetic profiles of the dead, but also their ancient journeys.In this concise narrative he tells us their long-forgotten stories of migration and intersection. It's well known that many human populations carry genetic material from Neanderthals; but, as Krause and his colleagues discovered, we also share DNA with a newly uncovered human form, the Denisovans. We know now that a wave of farmers from Anatolia migrated into Europe 8,000 years ago, essentially displacing the dark-skinned, blue-eyed hunter-gatherers who preceded them. The farmer DNA is one of the core genetic components of contemporary Europeans and European Americans. Though the first people to cross into North and South America have long been assumed to be primarily of East Asian descent, we now know that they also share DNA with contemporary Europeans and European Americans. Genetics has an unfortunate history of smuggling in racist ideologies, but our most cutting-edge science tells us that genetic categories in no way reflect national borders.Krause vividly introduces us to prehistoric cultures such as the Aurignacians, innovative artisans who carved animals, people, and even flutes from bird bones more than 40,000 years ago; the Varna, who buried their loved ones with gold long before the Pharaohs of Egypt; and the Gravettians, big-game hunters who were Europe's most successful early settlers until they perished in the ice age. This informed retelling of the human epic confirms that immigration and genetic mingling have always defined our species and that who we are is a question of culture not genetics.
The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke
Andrew Lawler - 2018
Chartered by Queen Elizabeth I, their colony was to establish a foothold for England in the New World. But by the time the colony's leader, John White, returned to Roanoke from a resupply mission in England, his settlers were nowhere to be found. They had vanished into the wilderness, leaving behind only a single clue--the word "Croatoan" carved into a tree. The disappearance of the Lost Colony became an enduring American mystery. For four centuries, it has gone unsolved, obsessing countless historians, archeologists, and amateur sleuths. Today, after centuries of searching in vain, new clues have begun to surface. In The Secret Token, Andrew Lawler offers a beguiling history of the Lost Colony, and of the relentless quest to bring its fate to light. He accompanies competing archeologists as they seek out evidence, each team hoping to be the first to solve the riddle. In the course of his journey, Lawler explores how the Lost Colony came to haunt our national consciousness, working its way into literature, popular culture, and politics. Incisive and absorbing, The Secret Token offers a new understanding not just of the Lost Colony, but of how its absence continues to define--and divide--America.
Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land
Walter R. Borneman - 2003
Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land shows that there are no easy answers on either side and that Alaska will always be crossing the next frontier.
The Stones Cry Out: How Archaeology Reveals the Truth of the Bible
Randall Price - 1997
Pottery shards, stone inscriptions, ancient scrolls, and other fascinating artifacts have shed new light on the people and events of the Bible—bringing them from the realm of mystery to the world of fact.Discover what new archaeological finds have to tell us about Israel’s journey to the promised land, the fall of Jericho’s walks, the ark of the covenant, the kings and prophets of Israel, the Assyrian and Babylonian invasions, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the time and people of Jesus, and more. Includes testimonies and interviews from leading archaeologists and exciting pictures featuring the latest finds made in the lands of the Bible.The Stones Cry Out will give you a new appreciation for both the world and the Word of the Bible!
The Templar Mission to Oak Island and Beyond: Search for Ancient Secrets: The Shocking Revelations of a 12th Century Manuscript
Zena Halpern - 2017
Two of history’s great mysteries—the fate of the Knights Templar and the truth about the Oak Island treasure—reveal themselves in this fascinating saga of hidden history. "The book we've all been waiting for!" says Rick Lagina, star of History Channel's Curse of Oak Island.
The Gathering Night
Margaret Elphinstone - 2009
But when one of her brothers goes hunting and never returns, the fragile balance of life is upset. Half-starved and maddened with grief, Alaia's mother follows her visions and goes in search of her lost son. Then a stranger from a rival tribe appears on their hearth seeking shelter. Are his stories of a great wave and a people perished really to be believed? What else could drive a man to travel alone between tribes in the depths of winter?Hopes of resolution come when Alaia's mother returns home as a Go-Between, one able to commune with the spirits. But as all the Auk people come together for their annual Gathering Night, who there will listen to the voice of a woman?The Gathering Night is a story of conflict, loss, love, adventure and devastating natural disasters. This utterly enchanting pre-historical novel is set deep in our stone-age past, but resonates as a parable of our troubled planet 8000 years on.