Origins : how earth's history shaped human history

by Lewis Dartnell

Hardcover, 2019

Status

Checked out
Due Sep 18, 2021

Publication

New York, NY : Basic Books, 2019.

Description

"When we talk about human history, we often focus on great leaders, population forces, and decisive wars. But how has the earth itself determined our destiny? Our planet wobbles, driving changes in climate that forced the transition from nomadism to farming. Mountainous terrain led to the development of democracy in Greece. Atmospheric circulation patterns later on shaped the progression of global exploration, colonization, and trade. Even today, voting behavior in the south-east United States ultimately follows the underlying pattern of 75 million-year-old sediments from an ancient sea. Everywhere is the deep imprint of the planetary on the human. From the cultivation of the first crops to the founding of modern states, Origins reveals the breathtaking impact of the earth beneath our feet on the shape of our human civilizations"--… (more)

Media reviews

Such a grand sweep of history and prehistory could be chaotic, but Dartnell’s story is beautifully written and organized. His infectious curiosity and enthusiasm tug the reader from page to page, synthesizing geology, oceanography, climatology, meteorology, geography, palaeontology, archaeology
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and political history in a manner that recalls Jared Diamond’s classic 1997 book Guns, Germs, and Steel.
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User reviews

LibraryThing member Stbalbach
Origins demonstrates many ways the Earth has shaped human history. Some of it is well known like the Black Belt in the American South East. But much of it is new, or at least feels new when told as a whole. Civilizations it turns out arose along the fault lines of plates because this is where
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minerals and other resources tend to be most available. The human species arose in the rift valley of East Africa because the special geography creates a wet-period/dry-period "pump" that sped up evolution and eventually pushed humans out of Africa. It keeps going page after page of perspectives and ideas. Your interest will be equal to how interesting you already find the topic. I see the influence of the land and geography everywhere in my home region, the earth is a strong but largely invisible background force on people's lives, it takes some consideration to see its influence, however it is everywhere from the large to the small and when you discover something it's a eureka moment. This book does a good job at showing many large-scale examples I never knew about (and many I did). Well worth the journey across time and place. One should remember however that just as demography is not destiny, neither is geography, yet both are background forces that rock the boat of history.
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LibraryThing member Opinionated
I bought this after hearing an interview with Lewis Dartnell on ABC Radio, in which he had plenty of interesting stories anecdotes to tell. Sadly the book doesn't quite live up to this but its still quite interesting.

The overall theme is how plate techtonics have created our world, and shaped the
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development of humans in sometimes surprising ways. This is interesting enough as far as it goes - yes we all understand that human civilizations found it easier to develop East - West than North - South due to similarities in soil, climate, temperature etc moving in that direction but Jared Diamond and others have already discussed this in detail - Diamond famously posing the question as to why the Spanish invaded the Aztecs and not the other way around.

Dartnell is more interesting on maritime history particularly the Portuguese innovations in navigation that opened up the fast route to India - and by accident led to the discovery of Brazil - and how using the Roaring 40s in the Southern Hemisphere effectively opened up a super highway to Indonesia, but also led to the wreck of many a ship that missed its exit ramp, off the coast of Western Australia

So its interesting, but is told rather in the tone of a TV documentary; perhaps thats what it is, or will be. I was hoping for something a little more
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LibraryThing member jgoodwll
Fascinating combination of geology, geography, technology and history. In a very readable style. Its scope can be gathered from excerpts from the bibliography:
- The shaping of modern human immune systems by multi-regional admixture with archaic humans.
- Climate change: biological and human
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aspects.
- Loess in Europe.
- The Barbegal water mill in its environment.
- The sea and civilization.
- Rich petroleum source rocks.
- Anthropogenic carbon release rate unprecedented during the past 66 million years.
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LibraryThing member Paul_S
Interesting but read like a book of trivia.

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