Lydia Pyne,Stephen J. Pyne
An enlightening investigation of the Pleistoceneâ€™s dual character as a geologic timeâ€”and as a cultural idea,The Pleistocene is the epoch of geologic time closest to our own. Itâ€™s a time of ice ages, global migrations, and mass extinctionsâ€”of woolly rhinos, mammoths, giant ground sloths, and not least early species of ,Homo,. Itâ€™s the world that created ours.,But outside that environmental story there exists a parallel narrative that describes how our ideas about the Pleistocene have emerged. This story explains the place of the Pleistocene in shaping intellectual culture, and the role of a rapidly evolving culture in creating the idea of the Pleistocene and in establishing its dimensions. This second story addresses how the epoch, its Earth-shaping events, and its creatures, both those that survived and those that disappeared, helped kindle new sciences and a new origins story as the sciences split from the humanities as a way of looking at the past.,Ultimately, it is the story of how the dominant creature to emerge from the frost-and-fire world of the Pleistocene came to understand its place in the scheme of things. A remarkable synthesis of science and history, ,The Last Lost World, describes the world that made our modern one.
Science,History,Anthropology,Nonfiction,Environment,Philosophy,Science,Biology
The Last Lost World: Ice Ages, Human Origins, and the Invention of the Pleistocene