The Last Lost World : Ice Ages, Human Origins, and the Invention of the Pleistocene

Pyne, Stephen J., Pyne, Lydia V.

ISBN 10: 0670023639 / ISBN 13: 9780670023639

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2012

Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in excellent condition. May show signs of wear or have minor defects. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 4083293-75

Inhaltsangabe:

An enlightening investigation of the Pleistocene’s dual character as a geologic time—and as a cultural idea

The Pleistocene is the epoch of geologic time closest to our own. It’s a time of ice ages, global migrations, and mass extinctions—of woolly rhinos, mammoths, giant ground sloths, and not least early species of Homo. It’s the world that created ours.

But outside that environmental story there exists a parallel narrative that describes how our ideas about the Pleistocene have emerged. This story explains the place of the Pleistocene in shaping intellectual culture, and the role of a rapidly evolving culture in creating the idea of the Pleistocene and in establishing its dimensions. This second story addresses how the epoch, its Earth-shaping events, and its creatures, both those that survived and those that disappeared, helped kindle new sciences and a new origins story as the sciences split from the humanities as a way of looking at the past.

Ultimately, it is the story of how the dominant creature to emerge from the frost-and-fire world of the Pleistocene came to understand its place in the scheme of things. A remarkable synthesis of science and history, The Last Lost World describes the world that made our modern one.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor:

Lydia V. Pyne is a lecturer at Drexel University. She has an MA and PhD in the history and philosophy of science, and an MA degree in anthropology.

Her father, Stephen J. Pyne, is a historian in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. He is the award-winning author of Voyager, Year of the Fires, and How the Canyon Became Grand.

Bibliografische Details

Titel: The Last Lost World : Ice Ages, Human ...
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
Einband: Hardcover
Zustand: Very Good