Göran Burenhult

TBD - draft review:

Compare to modern historians, in the 1970s, Axtell, Neal Salisbury, Francis Jennings, dissatisfied with the view of either primitive cultures or "balanced with Nature".

“Indians were seen as trivial, ineffectual patsies,” Salisbury, a historian at Smith College, says of the history actual taught to susceptible children in the United States.

But does a whole continent of patsies make sense, really?

By the 1990s, we have witnessed a tsunami of inquiry into the interactions between natives and newcomers in the era when they faced each other as relative equals. “No other field in American history has grown as fast,” according to Joyce Chaplin, a Harvard historian, in 2003. This 1994 volume is part of that tsunami.

It is true that Indian societies collapsed in the "Colonial Period". This had everything to do with the natives themselves, and with geography, and pathology. It was certainly to religiously ordained or technologically determined.

I like how Salisbury put it: “When you look at the historical record, it’s clear that Indians were trying to control their own destinies.” Even though neither the Indians nor the Colonials and Kings predicted the consequences.… (mere)

Global in scope, this work introduces the artifacts and implications showing human adaptation to Late Pleistocene climatic upheaval. Includes a spread on the Tyrolean Ice Man, the oldest preserved human body ever found.

"The Great Transition" deals with what now appears to be pleiotropic development of Agriculture in Southwest Asia between 10,000 and 4000 BC by specializing hunter-gatherers.

"Hunter-gatherers and Farmers in Africa" introduces 10,000 BC evidence from across various climatic zones of Africa.

"Stone Age hunter-gatherers and farmers in Europe" looks at the mesalithic communities. "The Megalith Builders of Western Europe" describes the stone building cultures which flourished between 4800 and 2800 BC.

"Bronze Age Chiefdoms and the End of Stone Age Europe" deals with introduction of metallurgy in Europe between 4500 and 750 BC.

"Stone Age Farmers in Southern and Eastern Asia" is a study of rice farming cultures between 6000 BC and AD 1000.

"Pacific Explorers" embraces the root crop cultures of Niu Gini and Melanesia.

"Farmers of the New World" describes cultures in the Americas between 10,000 BC and AD 1492.

"Why Only Some Became Farmers" presents reasons why some cultures did not adopt farming or herding as part of their subsistence strategy, looking at Inuit, Thule, and Arctic hunters and fishers of Eurasia.

Finally, a chapter on "Australia" follows the development of Aboriginal subsistence through their archeological remains. Includes the "tide riders" who built otherwise un-propeled rafts which could carry several people and their dingoes. [226] Shell middens date back to 28,000 years ago, although sea levels have drowned many coastal sites. Fragments of returning boomerangs over 10,000 years old have been found. [225]

DOGS. "The first animal to be domesticated was the dog." [68] From a grave in Israel, dated about 13,500 years ago.

39 Contributors with short biographies. Glossary and Index.… (mere)

With illustrated Glossary and Index. Photographs I have not seen elsewhere. 36 contributors. The perspective --"traditional peoples"--in the sense of pre-industrial State societies, is insightful. This work shows that the "pre-industrial" state was not uniform or universal. [9] In addition, the state societies are not exclusively triumphant, and many different modes of human social life remain.
This work is not comprehensive -- it makes no attempt to list the traditional people. However, it does traverse the Planet and pull examples from the various latitudes and environments across the globe.
Says very little about the pharmacological cultures--ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi) is mentioned once [208]. Disposes of the spiritual values of traditional people with dismissive generalities -- "Shamanism continues to be a prominent feature of virtually all Amazonian tribes." [208]. Clearly delineates themes of continuity and change, recording the milestones now playing.… (mere)