A more pressing mystery is: how did Van Helsing hightail from London to Amsterdam and back every three days by land, when just a little while earlier in the nineteenth century literary personas dreaded the prospect of traveling fifteen miles by coach, and arrived all battered and exhausted.
How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
51–60 of 95 posts
Re: How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
#52As far as I understand, Ian Morris's books are not taken very seriously in the academic world. I've read the first part of /Why the West rules/ and must admit that it reads a bit like trying to push a narrative: spinning up facts the right way to make them support his ideas and asserting universal truths without much backing… but I think I'm biased by the reviews I checked before reading the (first part of the) book.
Genuine question: I've heard this criticism for literally every pop-history book I've read (Guns, Germs, and Steel; Sapiens; The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, etc). Are there any history books that are taken seriously in the academic world that are actually fun to read? If so, any recommendations? If not, is the issue basically that if you want some history book to be fun, you've got…
I would recommend "The Dawn of Everything", by David Graeber (cultural anthropologist) and David Wengrow (archaeologist). It's written for a popular audience, but mainly complicates the type of narrative that pop history books tend to push.
Re: How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a bit of a generic problem here. "Pop-history" books generally need to be based around some sort of narrative - it's what primarily distinguishes them from their "purely academic" cousins. But the problem that the academic world often has with them is not the facts they contain, but the fact that they try to spin a narrative that the academic world doesn't yet feel "full" consensus on. Consequently, if you're…
Is it true, though, that academic works don't spin a narrative? That's a large part of what historians do: attempt to reconstruct a consistent version of events, what caused them to occur as they did, and what their effects were — in short, construct a coherent narrative. There might be a difference in emphasis on the average, with pop history focusing more on the narrative and less on facts that might be inconvenien…
I think the academic tone is closer to:
"Event A happened. Event B happened. Event C happened. In that order. Perhaps that means X"
The pop-history tone is closer to:
"Historical character M had plans to N, inspired by O. This is supported by the evidence we have for events A, B and C."
Re: How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
#54while i do appreciate good anthropological work, the simplest answer in this case is always the most direct.
Kindly ask her majesty the queen if she fancied a swim that day, or if the mood suited her more for a brisk walk.
Re: How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
#55While it seems clear that Great Britain has had a land connection with continental Europe numerous times, I'm not sure that I agree with the assumption that early humans couldn't have crossed the English Channel by boat. > whatever their other skills, Roger and his kind could not cross 34 km of open sea. We see similar arguments with respect to the Bering Sea land bridge, despite the fact that Siberians and Alaska Na…
The people that first crossed the Bering Strait were anatomically modern humans, and certainly had reasonable boating technology. Since the article is talking about 900kya, though, it's talking about Homo erectus (taxonomic splitters may use a different name). But nevertheless, in Southeast Asia, Homo erectus is known to have crossed the Lombok Strait by 800kya, as well as reaching Luzon by 700k; both of these would have required crossing substantial bodies of water.
Re: How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
#56It is possible for a well-trained human to swim the distance. In fact, it is possible to just see there is something across the north sea, if you are standing in the right place with the right weather. I see no reason why someone can't end up in Brittain just by accidentally falling in the north sea and maybe clinging to whatever floats around. You'd have to be lucky, but there is a lot of time to be lucky in (seen f…
> I see no reason why someone can't end up in Brittain just by accidentally falling in the north sea and maybe clinging to whatever floats around
I would expect that even Paleolithic people could deliberately put together something better than that; e.g, a raft, kayak or coracle from wood bound with hide.
Once you have that skill, "some adventurous people" would of course try to achieve a landing on that island on the horizon.
Re: How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
#57As far as I understand, Ian Morris's books are not taken very seriously in the academic world. I've read the first part of /Why the West rules/ and must admit that it reads a bit like trying to push a narrative: spinning up facts the right way to make them support his ideas and asserting universal truths without much backing… but I think I'm biased by the reviews I checked before reading the (first part of the) book.
It's actually at the top of Reddit's r/AskHistorians recommended reading list[1]. And I in fact ended up choosing to read it instead of Guns, Germs and Steel after enough comments there suggested to me that it was more deeply based in academia. 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/timi4/the_as...
It's actually at the top of Reddit's r/AskHistorians recommended reading list
That settles the matter then
> was more deeply based in academia.
You surely can't read the above article and believe that?
Re: How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually at the top of Reddit's r/AskHistorians recommended reading list[1]. And I in fact ended up choosing to read it instead of Guns, Germs and Steel after enough comments there suggested to me that it was more deeply based in academia. 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/timi4/the_as...
It's actually at the top of Reddit's r/AskHistorians recommended reading list That settles the matter then > was more deeply based in academia. You surely can't read the above article and believe that?
I feel like you might not be that familiar with r/AskHistorians? It is the least reddit-like part of Reddit, it has extremely high standards and is rigorously moderated. Here are the most notable critical threads on Guns, Germs and Steel[1]. Just because Why The West Rules For Now might seem to be preferred by them doesn't necessarily speak to its reputation, seeing as GGS apparently sets such a low bar.
I don't see any problems with Ian Morris' article here. He is a writer, as well as an academic. The audience for the article seems to be for well-informed, non-specialised intellectuals. As such the article seems well pitched.
1. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views...
Re: How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it true, though, that academic works don't spin a narrative? That's a large part of what historians do: attempt to reconstruct a consistent version of events, what caused them to occur as they did, and what their effects were — in short, construct a coherent narrative. There might be a difference in emphasis on the average, with pop history focusing more on the narrative and less on facts that might be inconvenien…
I think the academic tone is closer to: "Event A happened. Event B happened. Event C happened. In that order. Perhaps that means X" The pop-history tone is closer to: "Historical character M had plans to N, inspired by O. This is supported by the evidence we have for events A, B and C."
> "Event A happened. Event B happened. Event C happened. In that order. Perhaps that means X"
That's both academic and pop-history, where a better representation would be "A gazillion different events happened but let's talk about events A, B, and C." It's impossible to talk about all the events that happened, so everyone needs to select the "important" ones. Of course when selecting what's "important" the bias is employed. It's not uncommon to reach different conclusions when looking at certain events (while disregarding others).
Re: How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
#60It is possible for a well-trained human to swim the distance. In fact, it is possible to just see there is something across the north sea, if you are standing in the right place with the right weather. I see no reason why someone can't end up in Brittain just by accidentally falling in the north sea and maybe clinging to whatever floats around. You'd have to be lucky, but there is a lot of time to be lucky in (seen f…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_dispersal
It does happen a lot on evolutionary timescales; it's how lemurs got to Madagascar, for instance. But one would think humans have the situational awareness not to get stuck on a raft of vegetation drifting out to sea.