Trick question. They didn't. Britain didn't exist until 1707.
I am actually wondering whether "people" existed. Sapiens is younger than 950k years.
How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
61–70 of 95 posts
Re: How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
#62No post body was provided.
Re: How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
#63As 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…
The Dawn of Everything.
I’m reading it now. Probably not as fun as the others you mentioned. But so far it’s very enlightening.
Re: How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
#64Trick question. They didn't. Britain didn't exist until 1707.
I am actually wondering whether "people" existed. Sapiens is younger than 950k years.
No, Homo sapiens sapiens did not exist yet, but Homo Erectus would have been around then and possibly Homo heidelbergensis (who gave rise to Neanderthals).
Re: How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
#65> Ice in the Channel and water in the Channel both cut Britain off. Britain has never been cut off. As the cliche goes: "Storms in English Channel; continent cut off".
I've never heard this phrase and I spent half my life living in England where I could see France out of my window :)
Re: How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
#66It 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…
> You'd have to be lucky, but there is a lot of time to be lucky in (seen from the point of humanity of course, not from the individual dropping in the sea).
I’m no biologist, but I think you’d need at least two people to have a chance at sustainability.
Re: How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
#67Trick question. They didn't. Britain didn't exist until 1707.
The title says Britain, not Great Britain. I was making a pithy remark based on that.
But seeing as everyone's in the mood for educating me, here's the logic behind it:
Britain was an invention of a King that wanted rule of the whole. Great Britain is the island (which didn't exist when you could walk to it). The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island is the political entity. The Romans called it Brittania. After the Romans left, it stopped being called Britain (as it was separate countries and principalities) until the act of Union in 1707 removed Scottish parliament and the King proclaimed that it came under a single rule for the first time.
Re: How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
#68A 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.
That's part of the fun of reading the older classics. Some of it is wild. That struck me in Dracula too, how easily people and information traveled. Like their voyage to Transylvania, and how news travelled ahead of them by telegraph.
Re: How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Not a book, but acoup.blog has lots of well sourced, fun to read, articles by a history professor. The academic response to them has been positive from what I’ve seen.
Didn't the author say that he's writing to push an agenda? Anyway, it is a fantastic blog.
Re: How did people get to Britain 950k years ago?
#70It 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…
> You'd have to be lucky, but there is a lot of time to be lucky in (seen from the point of humanity of course, not from the individual dropping in the sea). I’m no biologist, but I think you’d need at least two people to have a chance at sustainability.
I can't remember where I read this but I think you need at least 16 people to have a genomically sustainable population