Origins

February 25, 2019
Dartnell (The Knowledge), a University of Westminster science communication professor, links plate tectonics to the emergence of the first hominins in a sometimes simplistic but intriguing look at the environment’s role in shaping human nature. Exploring how climate fluctuation drove hominin species out of Africa, Dartnell reviews early human history, covering migration, the development of agriculture, the rise of Mediterranean cultures, and the political consequences of clay, chalk, flint, copper, kaolin, and other natural resources. Curiously, Dartnell notes, a band of Democratic-leaning counties in otherwise conservative U.S. states coincides with the boundaries of an ancient ocean. He also conjectures loosely on how geology has influenced Britain’s national identity and why China has claimed the Tibetan Plateau. More conclusive is his discussion of how ocean currents have affected exploration and colonization. His writing in places seems aimed at younger readers—volcanoes “pop and fizz,” the earth’s egg shell crust holds gooey mantle, and the land mass that became the East African Ridge is described as “a huge zit.” Science mavens may also be taken aback that he provides primers on some fairly basic concepts, such as ice ages and human genetics. However, the central project of this book—providing a geological take on human history—is well illustrated and at moments, surprising. Agent: Will Francis, Janklow & Nesbit.

March 15, 2019
A thoughtful history of our species as a product of 4 billion years of geology.According to British astrobiologist Dartnell (Science Communication/Univ. of Westminster; The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch, 2014), "to truly understand our own story we must examine the biography of the earth itself-its landscape features and underlying fabric, atmospheric circulation and climate regions, plate tectonics, and ancient episodes of climate change. In this book we'll explore what our environment has done to us." Indeed, the author largely ignores human creations or actions, including war, religion, technology, and government. Readers will encounter plenty of intriguing surprises. The study of plate tectonics, which produces earthquakes and volcanoes, is vital to understanding the rise of early civilizations. The earliest, from the Aztecs to those in Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and India, grew along fault lines that happen to be rich in water and fertile soil. "We are the children of plate tectonics," writes Dartnell. For 80 to 90 percent of our existence, our planet was hotter than today; then, 50 million years ago, it began cooling. The Antarctic ice cap first appeared 35 million years ago, the Northern ice caps 15-20 million years later. East African jungles retreated, replaced by open grasslands that encouraged the diversity of hominins as well as the large herbivorous mammals they hunted. More than 2.5 million years ago, encouraged by variations in the Earth's movement, glaciers began spreading south and then retreating in a dozen ice ages. We are currently enjoying a warm period of retreat, but the industrial burning of fossil fuels is leading to an uncertain future of increasing temperatures, acidic oceans, unstable weather, shifting rainfall patterns, and rising sea levels. Despite the inevitable gloomy conclusion, Dartnell is an engaging guide through millions of years of history.An expert chronicle of the Earth that culminates in human civilization.

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May 1, 2019
Behind the human brilliance that historians recognize in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece, Dartnell discerns the effects of the plate-tectonic geology that created environments favorable to such innovation. To Dartnell's acute eye, later periods of human history likewise reflect the geodynamics of an evolving planet. Readers see, for instance, how Ice Age land bridges first brought to Eurasia a humped mammal later relied upon by traders traversing the desert stretches of the Silk Road, carrying China's dazzling fabrics west and Rome's glass and topaz east. Dartnell's earth science similarly explains how the steppes' grasslands gave another mammal, the horse, its natural range and how an unfavorable climate change impelled the nomadic peoples who had learned how to ride that mammal to move west, under Attila's banner. Long after the revolutionary technologies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries first stoked new appetites for energy, Dartnell detects the geological aftereffects of carboniferous swamp forests as a determinant of voting tendencies in regions providing fossil fuels. Penetrating geoscience delivers the surprising backstory of human history.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)