Product Description

Twenty thousand years ago Earth was in the midst of an ice age. Then global warming arrived, leading to massive floods, the spread of forests and the retreat of the deserts. By 5,000 BC a radically different human world had appeared. In place of hunters and gatherers there were farmers; in place of transient campsites there were towns. The foundations of our modern world had been laid and nothing that came after - the Industrial Revolution, the atomic age, the internet - have ever matched the significance of those events. AFTER THE ICE tells the story of climate change's impact during this momentous period - one that also saw the colonisation of the Americas and mass extictions of animals throughout the world. Drawing on the latest cutting-edge research in archaeology, cognitive science, paleontology, geology and the evolutionary sciences, Steven Mithen creates an evocative, original and remarkably complete picture of minds, cultures, lives and landscapes through 15,000 years of history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #112474 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 726 pages

Review
Steve Mithen will be taking part in number of literary festivals and events this year, including:Hay Festival (29th May)Cheltenham Festival (5th June)Edinburgh Festival (21st August)Royal Institution (7 November)National Museum ofScotland (13 November).Cafe Scientifique, Golders Green (9 December) Steve will be writing articles for:THES (20.6.03)TES (to be published in September)PLANET EARTH MAGAZINE.THE NEW SCIENTIST (17 May) Radio:BBC RADIO SCOTLAND (Thurday 22 May, review).SIMON MAYO SHOW (BBC Radio 5 Live, 7 July, interview)BBCRadio Berkshire (14 July)BBC Three Counties Radio (15 July)BBC Radio Kent (29 August)BBC Radio Cambridge (Book of the Week, review)Interest from IN OUR TIME (BBC Radio 4) for an interview in the Autumn Reviews confirmed so far include: NATURE, SOCIALIST STANDARD, BRITISH ARCHAEOLOGY 'The lucidity of Mithen's thought and prose will inform the professional and illuminate the general reader. After the Ice is that rare event: the right book at the right time.'Alan Garner, THE TIMES (23.7.03) '...[a] brilliant idea...[told with] Mithen's...characteristic virtues: immense erudition, lightly worn; mastery of vast material, wielded with impressive deftness. For clarity of exposition, fluencyof language, vividness of imagination, he is unrivalled in his field...the most readable and...most reliable general survey of the subject since Jack Harlan's, now more than a decade old.'Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, LITERARY REVIEW 'This is an important book, which succeeds in writing about the prehistoric past in a new way, restraining though not eliminating the preoccupations of the writer and offering a wealth of experienced detail for each continent...a sympathetic and informed introduction to a formative period in world history.'Colin Renfrew, TLS (29.8.03) 'Mithen has not only mastered his material, he has delivered a charming read and an up-to-date informative resource. After the Ice is an exceptional book..that students, specialists oR anyone else with curiosity about our early history can enjoy.'Mike Pitts, NEW SCIENTIST 'An engrossing study, lavishly illustrated.'GOOD BOOK GUIDE 'A BIG and important book...Ambitious and original and stimulating study.'THE SCOTSMAN (21.6.03) 'Steven MIthen has written a magnificent account of archaeology worldwide, and in this first edition of Current World Archaeology I am happy to hail the success of a great World Archaeologist.'CURRENT WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY (October 2003) '[AFTER THE ICE] at times reads like fiction, with evocative descriptions of people, places, landscapes and activities, but we can be safe in the knowledge that Mithen knows his facts...His written style is erudite and engaging andhis descriptive prose would be the envy of many novelists. AFTER THE ICE is packed full of information, but there is no obvious bombardment of facts. With few statistics, no tables, footnotes or continually interrupting references(the notes are confined to the back), the reader is an unwitting but enthusiastic participant in the learning process.'OXeN (August 2003)

Global warming is nothing new, as any archaeologist can testify. Earth goes through cycles of ice age and warming about every 100,000 years, which means the onset of the next ice age is not due for another 40,000 years. It is the ending of the last one that interests Steven Mithen, professor of early prehistory at the University of Reading. Only 20,000 years ago humanity stood on the brink of extinction, with vast areas of the planet buried beneath ice. Then something remarkable happened. Not merely a lifting of the temperature - that had happened countless times before - but humanity's reaction to it. In a 15,000-year period the nature of homo sapiens went through the most dramatic transformation. In that time the first civilizations appeared, art developed, religious beliefs were adopted, colonization took place and the first permanent settlements were set up. In other words, humanity began to organize itself, paving the way for the world we know today. It was not all good news, however. That period also bred enmity, even hatreds. As the human population grew, so did the notion of warfare. In this book Steven Mithen undertakes a 'cognitive' archaeological tour of the world, which means he attempts to explain the reasons why things happened at the rate and in the way they did. Astonishing similarities of development are mirrored among people who knew nothing of each others' existence. It was as though humanity suddenly came to a realization of knowledge that had always been there unsuspected - as if minds opened spontaneously, releasing locked-in secrets. In his previous book, The Prehistory of the Mind, Mithen examined this climactic development. Here he goes further, showing its effects on the environment. Looking at cultures from Australia to northern Europe, he answers questions about our ancestors and their emerging ways of thought. It is an engrossing study, lavishly illustrated with examples of prehistoric art and culture. (Kirkus UK)

The Scotsman, 21 June 2003
'A big and important book ... ambitious and original and stimulating'

Mike Pitts, New Scientist, 12 July 2003
'A charming read and an up-to-date informative resource. After the Ice is an exceptional book'

Customer Reviews

Good, but a little too long (and contains time travel science fiction)
Steven Mithen tells the story about how agriculture was discovered on the different continents of the earth. He is a gifted writer and being a researcher he has a lot of stories to tell and a lot of information to give.

Sadly Mithen has chosen to dedicating a fairly equal number of chapters to each of the continents of the Earth. So when he gets to Australia and East Asia he ends up repeating himself telling the same story that he also told about some of the earlier continent. So frankly the end of the book is a little boring and I had to struggle to finish it up.

In an effort to keep the readers attention Mithen invents a time travelling Victorian paleoanthropologist named John Lubbock and allows him to visit some of the places described in the book. So he switches back and forth between facts and fiction. This doesn't really work because we never get to hear who Mithens version ofJohn Lubbock really is and frankly I did not buy a history book to read science fiction about time travelling Victorian paleoanthropologists. The least they could do is to mention Lubbock in the description on the back of the book.

But then again the first half is really exiting, so if you buy the book and read the first half then you still get a lot of knowledge and a really good experience for only 10£.

A genuinely enthralling study.
Most people have at least a passing interest in prehistory, and the origin of modern human civilisation, and they generally do not want to wade through, as Mithen aptly puts it 'jargon-laden prose' which only academics of archeology and the like will be able to comprehend. And now, the 'casual' reader has been catered for by Mithen in this hefty tome; 'After the Ice'. And indeed, it works very well, being a reletively simple read, and yet being stimulating and informative - it does not patronise the reader.
We are given a detailed glimpse of the past through a device that works rather well; Mithen uses a fellow named John Lubbock (who shares a common name with a Victorian archeologist) who wonderes the globe, stopping by at various hunter-gather campsites in order to learn of their day to day life. Sensibly, Mithen doesn't give this Lubbock chap a personality as such, nor does he engage with conversation with the ancient peoples, he is merely a by-stander, Mithen simply describes what he sees. As I said, the device works well, however whilst these sections are mostly a joy to read, they tend to grow somewhat repetetive, even rambling in some cases. Occasionally one suspects that the everyday behaviour these tripespeople were supposed exhibit isn't based on archeological evidence, and rather he is making an 'educated guess' on how these people went about their daily affairs; however it is nice to see the author inject some imagination into the book, rather relying completely on strict scientific fact.
The rest of the book is made up of descriptions of the excavation of various hunter-gatherer sites, and the evidence found therein. These sections are again, thrilling and endlessly fascinating, however as the book wares on, the endless discussions of old animal bones, so-called 'stone nodules' and scrpas of charcoal and other human waste can become very repetative, and even boring in some cases.
So prehaps the book is a tad too long, the main 'book' itself is 511 pages of rather small print. The rest of the book is extensively endnoted - one doesn't have to read these, but if you want a deeper and more complex read, the endnotes will provide more detail on various points, so one certainly can't complain about a lack of detail - but prehaps it's length and repetition of various similar points will render it tiresome for some less comitted readers.
The book generally fills the reader with a sense of wonder and awe, and leaves you in high spirits. Unfortunatelly, Mithen saw the need to blight the end of the book with a chapter looking to the fururte of the human race, and he makes several bleak and grim predictions about global-warming. Ending the book on this deeply pessemistic note was completely inappropriate, and other blighted an otherwise uplifting book.

All in all, this is a generally fascinating book, and will enlighten the interested casual reader to no end. Recommended - provided you are a commited reader, and are prepared to wade through some repetition.

Wonderful Wonderful Book
If you have even the remotest interest in history, archaeology, anthropology or sociology you NEED to have this book. Its brilliantly written, engaging and well researched (although the field is moving so fast some of the ideas a little outdated especailly in respect to the populating of the americas/clovis debate). It takes you on a journey in time around the world to look at our earliest ancestors from a unique first person perspective- and allows you to feel like you are actually THERE watching these distant peoples. I really cant praise this book enough.