jazzy_dave (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jazzy_dave) wrote2023-01-02 10:51 pm
jazzy_dave) wrote2023-01-02 10:51 pm
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Book 3 - Lewis Dartnell "Origins: How the Earth Shaped Human History"
Lewis Dartnell "Origins: How the Earth Shaped Human History" (Vintage)
Starting with the hypothesis that humans developed the way we did in East Africa due to the climate created by the Great Rift Valley - a drying out of the land leading to the forest being replaced by savanna, amongst other factors - through the forces that raised mountains from which flowed rivers, depositing mineral rich alluvial soils in Mesopotamia and the Indus and Nile valleys, enabling the development of agriculture - extending this to show how voting patterns in US elections closely match the areas where African slaves were brought to farm cotton, and still have large black populations; how these geological forces allowed civilisation to flourish on the North and East coasts of the Mediterranean rather than the South; how the patterns of wind and ocean currents enabled European expansion and colonisation; how geological processes have given us the materials to build structures, make our technology and power our civilisations.
His arguments are well made and convincing, although sometimes written a little simplistically - an indication of this is that the footnotes sprinkled throughout the text are of the ‘fascinating aside’ variety, but I found most to be those I’d consider common knowledge. Perhaps that’s simply as I’m someone who reads quite a lot of this type of thing, of course, and a reader newer to the subject may get more out of these.
Overall, a great overview of how the unimaginably long and powerful processes of geology shape not only our world, but us as a species.
Starting with the hypothesis that humans developed the way we did in East Africa due to the climate created by the Great Rift Valley - a drying out of the land leading to the forest being replaced by savanna, amongst other factors - through the forces that raised mountains from which flowed rivers, depositing mineral rich alluvial soils in Mesopotamia and the Indus and Nile valleys, enabling the development of agriculture - extending this to show how voting patterns in US elections closely match the areas where African slaves were brought to farm cotton, and still have large black populations; how these geological forces allowed civilisation to flourish on the North and East coasts of the Mediterranean rather than the South; how the patterns of wind and ocean currents enabled European expansion and colonisation; how geological processes have given us the materials to build structures, make our technology and power our civilisations.
His arguments are well made and convincing, although sometimes written a little simplistically - an indication of this is that the footnotes sprinkled throughout the text are of the ‘fascinating aside’ variety, but I found most to be those I’d consider common knowledge. Perhaps that’s simply as I’m someone who reads quite a lot of this type of thing, of course, and a reader newer to the subject may get more out of these.
Overall, a great overview of how the unimaginably long and powerful processes of geology shape not only our world, but us as a species.