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El Niño, catastrophism, and culture change in ancient America
Brian Billman, David Hodell, Gary Huckleberry · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorAfter The Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5000 B.C.
Steven Mithen · 664 pages
"After the Ice is the story of a momentous period: one in which a seemingly minor alteration in temperature could bring anything from the spread of lush woodland to apocalyptic floods - and one that contains the origins of civilisation itself. For, by its close, dogs, sheep and cattle had been domesticated; rice, wheat and cotton were being harvested; and permanent villages and towns had sprung up
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Jared Diamond · 592 pages
"In his Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?" "As in Guns, G
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
Charles C. Mann · 660 pages
A groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492. Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus's landing had crossed the Bering Strait twelve thousand years ago; existed mainly in small, nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land
Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans
Brian M. Fagan · 295 pages
A Short History of Progress
Ronald Wright · 211 pages
Palaeolithic hunters who learnt how to kill two mammoths instead of one had made progress. Those who learnt how to kill 200 by driving a whole herd over a cliff had made too much. Many of the great ruins that grace the deserts and jungles of the earth are monuments to progress traps, the headstones of civilisations which fell victim to their own success. The twentieth-century´s runaway growth has
The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future
Riane Eisler · 261 pages
"In prehistorical times, Eisler argues, women and men lived together in egalitarian communities devoted to nurturance; with the imposition of male domination, female values gave way to creeds of hierarchy, aggression, power, obedience. Eisler, a futurist, posits a new society based on the recovery of more humane values."--Library journal (6/1/85).
A History of Religious Ideas 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries
Mircea Eliade · 489 pages
The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art
James David Lewis-Williams · 320 pages
The Language of the Goddess
Marija Gimbutas · 388 pages
History of religious symbols about the dominance of the Great Goddess based on archeological finds and art.
A History of Warfare
John Keegan · 432 pages
In *A History of Warfare*, Keegan outlines the development and limitations of warfare from prehistory to the modern era. It looks at various topics, including the use of horses, logistics, and "fire". One key concept put forward is that war is inherently cultural. In the introduction, he rigorously denounces the idiom "war is a continuation of policy by other means", rejecting on its face "Clausew
The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant
John Dominic Crossan · 507 pages
Reveals the historical Jesus by combining peasant anthropology, ancient history, and textual analysis.
The Neanderthals Rediscovered: How Modern Science Is Rewriting Their Story
Dimitra Papagianni, Michael A. Morse · 208 pages
For too long the Neanderthals have been seen as dim-witted evolutionary dead-enders who looked and behaved completely differently from us, but in recent years their story has been transformed thanks to new discoveries and advances in scientific techniques. In a compelling narrative one that has not previously been told in a way that encompasses the entire dramatic arc from evolution to expansion t
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World
David W. Anthony · 568 pages
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari · 456 pages
From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.” One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What hap
The Bog People: Iron-Age Man Preserved
Peter Vilhelm Glob · 200 pages
From archaeological and scientific knowledge and the evidence of classical writers, a picture is drawn of the lives of Danish Iron-Age people found preserved in peat bogs.
Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins
Ian Tattersall · 266 pages
"When homo sapiens made their entrance 100,000 years ago they were confronted by a wide range of other early humans--homo erectus, who walked better and used fire; homo habilis who used tools; and of course the Neanderthals, who were brawny and strong. But shortly after their arrival, something happened that vaulted the species forward and made them the indisputable masters of the planet. This boo
Hamlet's Mill: An Essay Investigating the Origins of Human Knowledge And Its Transmission Through Myth
Giorgio De Santillana · 505 pages
When God Was a Woman
Merlin Stone · 265 pages
Here, archaeologically documented is the story of the religion of the Goddess. Known by many names, she reigned supreme in the Near and Middle East. How did the change in women's roles come about? By documenting the wholesale rewriting of myth and religious dogmans, Stone details an ancient conspiracy that laid the foundation for one of culture's greatest shams--the legend of Adam and fallen Eve.