I just finished reading “Homo Brittanicus: The Incredible Story of Human Life in Britain” by Chris Stringer. This was a book that I decided to read after hearing Chris Stringer interviewed on the Scientific American podcast a few weeks ago. He came across as a really enthusiastic, knowledgeable and skilled story teller and so I thought his book would probably be an interesting read. The book tells the story of a recent research project called the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) that set out to bring together a whole range of experts from different fields to integrate, extend and better understand the evidence for early human occupation of the British Isles. It takes the reader into the worlds of Neanderthals, early Homo variants, archaeology, anthropology, paleaoclimates and paleaontology and explores what the evidence can tell us and what it can’t tell us.
I did enjoy the book but not as much as I had expected to from listening to the podcast. It’s a little heavy going in places and I got a bit lost sometimes working out which inter-glacial period or ice age was being referred to because the overall time-line of the story isn’t that strongly put across. Still, the book took me into a world that I don’t normally encounter or think about thich is always a good thing I think. One of the key elements of the events surrounding early human occupation of Britain was the dramatic changes in sea level that accompanied changes in ice volume associated with ice ages, and there’s a lot of emphasis placed on the fact that the British Isles used to be much more connected to (what is now) mainland Europe across the North Sea. An important region of this land bridge is called Doggerland (now submerged). So, it was interesting to pick up this week’s New Scientist, Issue 2735 [21 November 2009] and read an article all about how archaeologists are turning to evidence from the seafloor (from places like Doggerland) to unlock further secrets of early human history in Europe.
Tim O'Hare 