Timewalkers: The Prehistory of Global Colonization

by Clive Gamble

Book Overview

The notion of progress still bedevils our conception of prehistory, with human evolution persistently seen as a movement from inferior to superior, primitive to advanced, simple to complex.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674892038
• ISBN13: 9780674892033
• Release Date: March 1996
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A scholarly but poetic history of earliest man

Timewalkers examines the various theories of how humanity spread across the world. For such a work of scholarship, Gamble keeps things interesting with his quirky and nearly-poetic writing style. A vast amount of detail is processed, but never feels overwhelming. The earliest history of mankind is not an easy subject; there are many bits of evidence that don't always fit neatly together. Competing theories of how those bits might fit are examined, sometimes the results are conclusive, sometimes not, but the overall picture of prehistory is filled out. As a side note, for those with some doubts about evolution, this book will quell them. Many different aspects of Homo sapiens evolution are examined thoroughly, and the process is much clearer than when Darwin first developed the theory.