After the Ice: A global human history 20,000-5000 BC by Steven Mithen, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 拢25, ISBN 0297643185 Reviewed by Mike Pitts
THERE must have been a moment when Steven Mithen wondered at the madness of attempting an intimate 15,000-year history of the entire human world during the time before history. A bleak black cover and 622 pages seem calculated to intimidate the reader. Yet Mithen has not only mastered his material, he has delivered a charming read and an up-to-date informative resource. After the Ice is an exceptional book.
October 2002. Mithen visits a Turkish hilltop known as Gobekli Tepe and is astonished. He and Klaus Schmidt of the German Archaeological Institute see 2.4-metre-high carved stone pillars, many with engraved animals and undeciphered symbols. There is a whiff of Easter Island: mysterious stone carvings, with one monster still attached to the quarry bedrock 100 metres away. When we learn that these massed pillars are 11,500 years old, our jaws drop with Mithen鈥檚. And when he notes that he can see the hills where genetic studies have identified the closest known wild relative to modern wheat, we鈥檙e hooked.
Advertisement
From agriculture鈥檚 origins in western Asia, Mithen leads us anticlockwise around the world, meeting archaeologists and visiting excavations. We are not alone. Mithen has invented a guide 鈥淛ohn Lubbock鈥�. In his Victorian guise Lubbock is the author of Prehistoric Times, a key early archaeology text for whose preparation he visited 19th-century ruins and living 鈥渟avages鈥�. Meanwhile a modern 鈥淛ohn Lubbock鈥� travels the ancient worlds, hitting his head on low caves, eating stone-age hunters鈥� leftovers, thumbing his 1865 namesake鈥檚 book.
With this device, Mithen alternates archaeological assessments with imagined ancient scenes. He is at his best describing places he knows well, in Europe and western Asia. Oaks are 鈥渟turdy鈥�, smoke is 鈥渁crid鈥�: the smell of wood smoke, it seems, stalked the ancient world from the Hebrides to Tasmania. You may ignore the Lubbocks and enjoy the ancient excursions as vivid, engaging insights into a leading archaeologist鈥檚 view of his profession鈥檚 achievements in writing prehistory.
He does not hesitate to make judgements on controversies famous to specialists: people, but no hippo hunting, on Cyprus in 10,000 BC; cannibalism in Somerset in 12,700 BC England; and claims for people at Meadowcroft in North America before 15,000 BC are rejected, while 12,500 BC occupation at Monte Verde, Chile, is approved. And he supports Anna Roosevelt鈥檚 vision of sophisticated Amazonian cultures whose impact questions the 鈥渘atural鈥� status of the rainforest. Nearly 100 pages of footnotes and references beckon.
Others will argue with his selection and interpretations of discoveries and stories. Let them write alternatives, and know what an extraordinary challenge Mithen has tackled with such panache. This is a wonderful book that students, specialists or anyone else with curiosity about our early history can enjoy. Used at school, it will encourage some to study archaeology. The University of Reading, where Mithen teaches, should give him a pay rise before somewhere else does.