Can anyone recommend a modern book to learn more about early humans?
I read "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari which contains a chapter on it, but was left wanting more.
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4 comments
The first 2 may help of my yesterday's comment <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20333451>
The guy I spoke to who recommended the chimp book also recommended 'Yiwara: Foragers of the Australian Desert' <https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21412584-yiwara>. The first part is an observation of their life, the second part is a terribly sad description of their very ancient culture being destroyed simply by the presence of western culture. It was less interesting, but mostly it was just too sad to read. I skipped that.
Reason he recommended the chimpo book and Yiwara is I asked him about the then-new finding of a very old artefact on which he had some fascinating stuff to say. I asked him how he knew these things, he said 'personal experience, mostly'.
'The innocent Anthropologist' was suggested by someone else. Very revealing, very funny though.
The aztec book I also pushed... well, it's a damn good read too!
After the Ice by Steven Mithen: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/264288.After_the_Ice
It's a doorstop of a book, but very interesting, tracing the threads of hunter-gatherers transitioning to civilisations all over the world, 20,000 - 5,000 BCE.
I had people point at laugh at me in a hotel bar once because of the size of that book (I could tell from their hand gestures it was the book and not me they were laughing at!) - a good read though.
I would recommend this book by evolutionary anthropologist Svante Pääbo.
Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
https://www.amazon.com/Neanderthal-Man-Search-Lost-Genomes/d...
Harari is an academic, and includes a copious bibliography in his Notes section, which would be a good start.