The desire to recover the faint origins of human community has shaped this year’s reading project: to linger among the first traces of civilisation, between 10,000 and 5,000 BC. There is a gravity to these beginnings, the slow accumulation of meaning in ritual, settlement, and story.
I have gathered a set of recent works that approach this early human experience from varied angles. Meave Leakey’s The Sediments of Time offers a record not only of scientific discovery but of a lifetime spent in conversation with the earth itself. Chris Gosden’s Prehistory: A Very Short Introduction distills vastness into something momentarily graspable. Rens Bod’s World of Patterns broadens the enquiry: how did early knowledge systems form and endure?
Thomas Higham’s The World Before Us and Louise Humphrey and Chris Stringer’s Our Human Story examine the delicate web of ancestry and invention that underlies our present. Kermit Pattinson’s Fossil Men follows the search for the earliest evidence of human emergence, tracing the fragile convergence of bone and story.
Each of these books is an invitation to sit quietly at the edge of known history: to imagine the first tentative steps into language, memory, and world-making.
Very interesting. (And I started re-reading Solstad.) Do you have any recommendations on books about prehistoric art?
Thanks. I find Bataille’s ‘Lascaux or the birth of art’ fascinating & Lewis-Williams’ ‘The Mind in the Cave’ is mentioned by Steve in these comments, which also looks compelling.
I haven’t read it but David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything seems relevant. And perhaps you know of David Lewis-Williams’ The Mind in the Cave because I reference it in my post/chapter on cave paintings, and though published more than 10 years ago, it’s a hugely impressive book.
I do recollect your reference to ‘The Mind of the Cave’ and being interested at the time. Thanks for the reminder. I’m aware of Graeber/Wengrow and should make the time for it as I’ve long intended.