Craig Childs: Atlas of a lost world (2018)
269 pages
English language
Published Dec. 18, 2018
Scientists squabble over the locations and dates for human arrival in the New World. The first explorers were few, encampments fleeting. At some point in time, between twenty and forty thousand years ago, sea levels were low enough that a vast land bridge was exposed between Asia and North America-- but was not the only way across. Childs provides an unsparing, vivid, revelatory travelogue through prehistory that traces the arrival of the First People in North America twenty thousand years ago, the megafauna they found here, and the artifacts that enable us to imagine their lives and fates. -- adapted from publisher info
A really great book - seamlessly blends a captivating adventure narrative with the state of current science on human migrations and settlement of the Americas. I really enjoyed this.
I bought this book fairly randomly, not knowing Craig Childs or his writing. I was startled by how well he wrote—I thought I'd picked up a quasi-history book. As I read, I was more and more taken with it. I really liked the book's structure, which meshed personal essay and historical analysis, lyrical and factual. I particularly appreciated the knowledge he gained from physically entering the world, recreating (to the best of his ability) what someone thousands of years ago might have experienced. I missed Alaska when we went to Florida, missed Florida when we went out West, loved landscapes that are not in my personal repertoire to love. More experienced Craig Childs readers might say, yeah, we know all that. But I did not, and the book was a jewel of a discovery for me.
