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| After The Ice: A Global Human History, 20, 000 5000 B. C
| | Steven Mithen
| This is the story of the human race during one of the most momentous periods of change the earth has ever seen
20,000 BC was the peak of the ice age and humans lived in small groups, scratching out an existence in whatever way they could. But over the next ten millennia, all that was to change. as the earth went through a period of global warming, the ice sheets began to recede, habitable woodlands spread and other areas became flooded, often providing fertile river valleys and plains.
From living in small mobile groups, human beings began to congregate - to build permanent villages, then towns. And with the shift from a hunter-gatherer society, came the domestication of animals, the planting of crops and the growth of "specialist" professions such as craftsmen and priests. From just a relatively small change in temperature, "civilisation", as we know it, was born.
A brilliant idea... for clarity of exposition, fluency of language, vividness of imagination, he is unrivalled in his field - Felips Fernandez-Armesto, Literary Review
An ambitious and original and stimulating study - Scotsman
Cover image: Natufian necklace from Ha Nahal Cave
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