Cro-Magnon, Brian Fagan

Cro-Magnon is reasonably informative, albeit perhaps a little out of date and about as focused on the Neanderthals as on the Cro-Magnons. It had fairly similar information to a lot of other books I’ve read about human evolution, not really managing to make the Cro-Magnons stand out as a specific group worth a whole book. The recreations were mostly pretty uninspired, and the assumption that gender roles would be something straight out of a 50s sitcom (as someone else put it) was pretty eyeroll inducing.

There is some interesting info here, but in the end… I got a little bored, I guess. Not much of it is sticking with me, except my eyerolling at the idea that women were subordinate to men from the start.

Rating: 4/5

Buy this book: Amazon UK | Amazon US | The Book Depository
The above affiliate links, at no extra cost to you, provide a small commission for me if you purchase something.

Fossils: The Key to the Past, Richard Fortey

This is probably more of a reference book than one to read straight through; it’s beautifully illustrated with sketches and photographs reproducing common and interesting fossils, and it has advice on how to identify fossils, clean them up and store them, along with the relatively straightforward explanations of how fossils form, how they can be useful, and specific titbits on various different individual fossils.

The information wasn’t new to me, and it isn’t Fortey’s finest writing, though he can always make geology sound fascinating. It’s a beautiful book, though, and one I’ll definitely keep for reference.

Rating: 4/5

Buy this book: Amazon UK | Amazon US | The Book Depository
The above affiliate links, at no extra cost to you, provide a small commission for me if you purchase something.

The Power of Babel, John McWhorter

It’s been a little too long since I read this to write a detailed review, but on the whole I found it readable and interesting. At times it began to feel belaboured in terms of the examples given and the detail gone into, though of course, I’ve also read various other books about linguistics and so I had some grounding in what I was reading already. For the most part, McWhorter avoids being prescriptive about language and tracks change in language as how language works — which you’d expect, or hope for at least, in a linguist, but it isn’t always the case.

There’s some interesting stuff particularly on creoles and pidgins, which somewhat debunks the idea that a pidgin becomes a creole through children speaking it, etc. Not that there’s no truth to it, but McWhorter complicates the picture a little.

Rating: 3/5

Buy this book: Amazon UK | Amazon US | The Book Depository
The above affiliate links, at no extra cost to you, provide a small commission for me if you purchase something.

The Sutton Hoo Story, Martin Carver

If you’re interested in the Sutton Hoo burials and the history of the whole site, including a detailed examination of how the sites were excavated and when, this is definitely a good resource. If you’re more interested in the more spectacular finds at Sutton Hoo, i.e. the contents of Mound 1, then that isn’t the focus here and although there are lots of helpful illustrations and a fair number of colour pictures, it’s not all about treasure.

For me, as with a lot of archaeology books, I find myself wondering about some of the author’s assertions. For example, that over a century people would ‘undoubtedly’ remember who was buried in a particular place. I find myself pretty doubtful about that, especially in earlier times when generations were rather shorter than they are now.

Overall, though, there’s some interesting information and speculation here, and I’d say it’s worth reading.

Rating: 4/5

Buy this book: Amazon UK | Amazon US | The Book Depository
The above affiliate links, at no extra cost to you, provide a small commission for me if you purchase something.

The Earth After Us, Jan Zalasiewicz

This starts off as being just an explanation of how geology works — deposition over time, the way rocks are transformed and eroded, etc, etc. The last couple of chapters start getting into the stuff I’m really interested in: how material remains of humans might weather and last, to be found for potential future alien archaeologists. I didn’t really love Zalasiewicz’s attempts at sci-fi, with his commentary on these alien archaeologists/anthropologists and what they might think. Like most people, he sticks too close to the way humans think, and doesn’t try and figure out what the alien equivalent of “it must be for ritual purposes” might be.

(For instance, imagine a society entirely driven by scientific experiment. Instead of interpreting everything as ritual, they’d assume it was an attempt to find out what would happen if you did x and y! And then they’d try it for themselves! Doesn’t that sound interesting as an idea?)

Mostly pretty standard stuff, but the last couple of chapters were worth it.

Rating: 3/5

Buy this book: Amazon UK | Amazon US | The Book Depository
The above affiliate links, at no extra cost to you, provide a small commission for me if you purchase something.