The Last Lost World, Lydia V. Pyne
The Last Lost World, Lydia V. Pyne
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The Last Lost World
Ice Ages, Human Origins, and the Invention of the Pleistocene

Author: Lydia V. Pyne, Stephen J. Pyne

Narrator: Walter Dixon

Unabridged: 9 hr 47 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 09/11/2012


Synopsis

An enlightening investigation of the Pleistocene’s dual character as a geologic time—and as a cultural idea

The Pleistocene is the epoch of geologic time closest to our own. It’s a time of ice ages, global migrations, and mass extinctions—of woolly rhinos, mammoths, giant ground sloths, and not least early species of Homo. It’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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Brian on January 01, 2013

While reading this book I felt like I had fallen out of a drift boat in rough water and was being tossed in the foaming current. There were parts of the book that were excellent and peaked my interest and made me feel like I had come to the surface for an instant of clear air only to be sucked back......more

Goodreads review by Matthew on April 28, 2013

I have a great deal of respect for what the writers were trying to do, unfortunately as brilliant as they seem to be, they are overwhelmed by the weight of the work. As others have commented, this book is more about the history of science than the Pleistocene. Some have criticized the writers for sn......more

Goodreads review by Beauregard on July 22, 2014

It took me a while to realize that this book wasn't about the development of the Ice Age and the evolving of homo sapiens, but, rather, a story about the development of man's idea about thinking about those things. The story that we tell (the narrative) to explain our understanding has changed as our......more

Goodreads review by Teressa on September 25, 2012

This is an incredibly well written book about a topic so many of us really know so little about-the Pleistocene. This is so much more than a rehash over what megafauna lived & died during that time. This is about what constitutes the Pleistocene as we humans define it. It's about what possibly makes......more

Goodreads review by Coan on April 07, 2015

There was much impressive work here, but the treasures of information and vision were buried beneath a mountain of verbiage and overblown prose...it might have been easier to just go and hunt down some Pleistocene fossils. This was a pity since there was much erudition on display, and informing scie......more