Reddit mentions: The best prehistory books

There are far too many to describe one as "the best", but here are some of my favourites.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes is a well deserved winner of the Pulitzer Prize. A combination of history, science and biography and so very well written.

A few of my favourite biographies include the magisterial, and also Pulitzer Prize winning, Peter the Great by Robert Massie. He also wrote the wonderful Dreadnaught on the naval arms race between Britain and Germany just prior to WWI (a lot more interesting than it sounds!). Christopher Hibbert was one of the UK's much loved historians and biographers and amongst his many works his biography Queen Victoria - A Personal History is one of his best. Finally, perhaps my favourite biography of all is Everitt's Cicero - The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician. This man was at the centre of the Fall of the Roman Republic; and indeed fell along with it.

Speaking of which, Rubicon - The Last Years of the Roman Republic is a recent and deserved best-seller on this fascinating period. Holland writes well and gives a great overview of the events, men (and women!) and unavoidable wars that accompanied the fall of the Republic, or the rise of the Empire (depending upon your perspective). :) Holland's Persian Fire on the Greco-Persian Wars (think Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes! Think of the Movie 300, if you must) is equally gripping.

Perhaps my favourite history book, or series, of all is Shelby Foote's magisterial trilogy on the American Civil War The Civil War - A Narrative. Quite simply one of the best books I've ever read.

If, like me, you're interested in teh history of Africa, start at the very beginning with The Wisdom of the Bones by Alan Walker and Pat Shipman (both famous paleoanthropologists). Whilst not the very latest in recent studies (nothing on Homo floresiensis for example), it is still perhaps the best introduction to human evolution available. Certainly the best I've come across. Then check out Africa - Biography of a Continent. Finish with the two masterpieces The Scramble for Africa on how European colonialism planted the seeds of the "dark continents" woes ever since, and The Washing of the Spears, a gripping history of the Anglo-Zulu wars of the 1870's. If you ever saw the movie Rorke's Drift or Zulu!, you will love this book.

Hopkirk's The Great Game - The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia teaches us that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

I should imagine that's enough to keep you going for the moment. I have plenty more suggestions if you want. :)

I'm no expert in Medieval or Old-Norse studies, however I've do have an interest in it & from some searching on various different aspects of the Vikings I come across these:

The Cambridge History of Scandinavia: Volume 1. Prehistory to 1520 it's a anthological survey book consisting of both historiographical and hagiographical (biographies of saints) primary & secondary sources ranging from prehistory ( before historical events were documented) through to medieval history of Scandinavia. It's quite pricey but definitely worth the money if your serious...

>The first part of the volume surveys the prehistoric and historic Scandinavian landscape and its natural resources, and tells how man took possession of this landscape, adapting culturally to changing natural conditions and developing various types of community throughout the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. The rest - and most substantial part of the volume - deals with the history of Scandinavia from the Viking Age to the end of the Scandinavian Middle Ages (c. 1520). The external Viking expansion opened Scandinavia to European influence to a hitherto unknown degree. A Christian church organisation was established, the first towns came into being, and the unification of the three medieval kingdoms of Scandinavia began, coinciding with the formation of the unique Icelandic 'Free State'.

The History of Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, Denmark,Finland and Iceland) is similar to Cambridge History yet significantly cheaper

The Viking World by Stefan Brink & Neil Price is a mid-range anthological book compromising of many articles from various scholars.

>I would really appreciate material that covers linguistics.....philology, morphology and the like
As for the other categories, I would really appreciate some introductory material on archaeology.

This book will probably be the best one for you because it includes all of the above.

Myth and Religion of the North: the Religion Ancient Scandinavia this book is a good overview of the different mythologies before the christianisation of the nordics.

Women in the Viking Age is a good book on the niche subject area of Women roles within the viking age nordics & its various colonies (from Greenland to Russia). Jesch uses various pieces of evidence from archaeological finds, runic inscriptions, historical records & Old Norse literature.

I would also recommend you look into the Icelandic sagas & Eddas. I'd use SagaDB because there are many various different icelandic sagas & in a variety of languages including English, Icelandic & Old Norse. If you'd like to go about learning O.N. you check the Viking Society for Northern Research or check out the books: A New Introduction to Old Norse: I Grammar: 1 or Viking Language 1: Learn Old Norse, Runes, and Icelandic Sagas

If you're interested at all in the presence of the Vikings (and later scandinavians) in Eastern Europe check out Viking Rus: Studies on the Presence of Scandinavians in Eastern Europe

Hopefully this helps if you have any more specific questions don't be afraid to ask :)

> I think Neanderthals were as intelligent as Homo sapiens.

That's a fairly minority position ...

> My speculation is that they never got 10000 years of climate stability like humans enjoyed during the Holocene.

Except they did. Neanderthals existed between 350kya and 42kya. Now look at the global temperatures for that period. So there was a warm period between 110,000 and 125,000 years ago that would be about as warm as it is now (omitting very recent climate change effects for the moment).

> OTOH, humans were lucky enough to live during a time were the global temperature remained +- 1 C for ten thousands years.

Ok, first of all, the term "humans" applies both to Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Second of all, the prehistoric agricultural theories have settled on the idea that basic domestication of cereal crops occurred in at most a few centuries; i.e., the only thing preventing homo sapiens from developing agriculture was a relatively brief period of time when climate allowed for it.

(Just look at the Kebaran -> Natufian development relative to the Bølling-Allerød interstadial and the Younger Dryas. The Ice Age stopped briefly, they tried to adopt sedentism and were on their way leaving archeological evidence, then the ice age came back, and it pwned them. And when the ice age ended for real, modern societies basically formed. This is all described in Steven Mithen's After the Ice in the "Western Asia" chapter at the beginning).

Third of all, 15,000 years seems like plenty of time (the 110,000 to 125,000 time period I was referring to) to develop agriculture even if, for some reason, you are running somewhat slower than the Natufians.

> Technologies like agriculture and writing had time to grow and develop in a relatively stable climate.

Writing follows from advanced cultures growing out of agricultural societies. That is to say, agriculture by itself is the essential bottleneck of concern, writing is almost inevitable once an agricultural society gets large and sophisticated enough.

> After 9,500 years of a stable climate and accumulation of information, the renaissance happened, from there industrialization and the Information Age happened.

Well ... as Jared Diamond correctly points out (in "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and other publications of his), it is actually geography that creates the climate stability. Basically, the Middle-East, Indus Valley, and some parts of China are basically in climate zones where one can develop long-term agriculture sedentary societies.

You only need some kind of reasonable interstadial period between ice ages, which the Neanderthals definitely experienced (and yet failed to develop agricultural societies).

Definitely! [This] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Etruscan-World-Routledge-Worlds/dp/0415673089/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1382288219&sr=8-10&keywords=etruscan) is a great, SUPER new book (~2 months old) about a wide range of Etruscan studies, from archaeology to religion to writing. It really showcases current trends in the field, while also giving some general articles for background.

If you like languages, [this] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Etruscan-Language-Introduction-Revised/dp/0719055407/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382288468&sr=8-1&keywords=etruscan+language) is the definitive book about the little-understood Etruscan language.

And if you don't mind some more general works that are a little older, these three served as my entry into the Etruscan world: [The Etruscans] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Etruscans-Graeme-Barker/dp/0631220380/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1382288562&sr=8-3&keywords=etruscan) is a general introduction, [Etruscan Art] (http://www.amazon.com/Etruscan-World-Nigel-Jonathan-Spivey/dp/0500203040/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1382288622&sr=8-5&keywords=etruscan) if you are more art-based, and [The Etruscan Life and Afterlife] (http://www.amazon.com/Etruscan-Life-Afterlife-Handbook-Studies/dp/0814318134/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1382288622&sr=8-6&keywords=etruscan) about religion, funerary archaeology/architecture, and general history. The last one was my guide as I wrote my undergrad thesis, so it is a personal favorite of mine.

Enjoy! They are really fascinating.

Edit: Thanks for gold!

The first two volumes of this series are for middle school:

​

https://www.amazon.com/Human-Odyssey-Vol-Prehistory-Through/dp/1931728534/ref=sr_1_1?crid=13HH1NAQ6IPNG&keywords=human+odyssey+vol+1&qid=1556556024&s=gateway&sprefix=human+odyssey%2Caps%2C121&sr=8-1

​

I own the first two but have not used them yet. They LOOK good to me when I flip through them. Planning to use vol 2 this coming year - son will be 6th grade. It seems to be pretty well thought of in various homeschool groups. You can get a student book and teacher guide, but it was a little hard to find. I found a used set on thriftbooks.com. Seems to be online classes based around the books at k12.com. But that site is so confusing I couldn't figure out how the classes work. Think you might have to "enroll" in an online school.

I generally love Pandia Press's science. But I have seen multiple times in various facebook groups that their history is a lot of writing and busywork and my son has dysgraphia so I opted to kind of make my own modern history plan for next year. We're trying to get synced up with Build Your Library for 7th grade - discovered BYL a month ago and really like it.

​

Anyway, please note that both of my recommendations for and against things are mostly based on second hand opinions at this point until I actually start the Human Odyssey book in the fall.

​

EDIT: Pandia Press History Odyssey is on sale right now though, so maybe I will take a look at that too!

Bit of a warning, I might have gotten a bit too much. But, in my search I realized we have a rather large section of rock art. So let me know if you'd like any feedback on rock art traditions and archaeological assessments, or if that's much too obscure and prehistory for you.

Starting with the prehistoric suggestions and moving on from there, Movement, exchange and Identity in Europe in the 2nd and 1st millennia BC takes a look at Ireland and Britain social exchanges with the rest of Europe, with an argument that the channel didn't inhibit progress and the exchange of ideas/trade but actually was conducive to such things. It's a collection of papers.

More of an extension off the first suggestion, Becoming European looks at the earliest foundations for European culture and traces the influence of those prehistoric civilizations into modern day. More of the same with Bronze Age Connections so really you have your choice of the group for which might better suit what you're looking for.

The next title, Romans and Barbarians Beyond the Frontiers brings together academics on Roman Britain, specifically looking at the surviving viewpoints of Rome's take on "barbarians" of the north. There's quite a bit of research, both broad and niche, about Roman Britain but that doesn't tend to focus specifically on northern Europe like this collection does.

Slight aside, one of the interesting socio-political heroes that come from this time period is Arminius, and while lately he's been associated in a negative light, the original story of him being captured, raised in Rome, and eventually betraying Rome during a military campaign in the north, is pretty interesting. Forbes had an article about the coin deposit discovery that confirmed the location of the battle, just to get you started in that direction if you're interested. Maybe a bit too obscure?

Apparently this book isn't in production anymore, but it's in my database so maybe you might luck out and find a library that has it. But splendour of power examines the material and social value of kings and gold/silver, specifically around the North Sea - so smack dab in the region you're look at. Bit unfortunate it's not in print. A quick google search yielded this, so maybe delve more into that if you're interested?

Moving on down the timeline, Everyday Products in the Middle Ages looks at the average consumer and individual's lifestyle in relation to archaeological objects.

Next to each other, both focus on a specific region but examine social spheres, are Myth and Materiality in a Woman's World for Shetland and Myth and Materiality for Ireland. Both look at how myths and research can feed into the other, while providing specific case examples throughout history of both locations.

For a more contemporary take, the essay Heritage and Peacebuilding by Diana Walters does include regions outside of your list, but the first half takes a look at northern Europe and the Balkans in order to see if a peaceful society is attainable looking at the heritage/history of each region.

And since war is an extension of politics by another means, there are quite a lot of books on warfare in the region! I nabbed the Roman Britain one because it's perhaps the most extensive list, with Warfare in Northern Europe Before the Romans - which is, as the title says, actually prior to Rome's influence.

If you'd like a main source, the publisher Pen & Sword seems to have quite a selection of war, war histories, family histories and the like. Their Your Towns and Cities in the Great War series provides exhaustive coverage of UK cities that were impacted by the Great War. Really useful and helpful if you want primary sources such as legal documents, letters, death certificates and copies of land deeds.

Sorry if that was a bit much! I had trouble narrowing things down and left a lot off at the last minute because I was concerned about being on point. These are all pretty scholarly, but that's research texts for you. The Pen & Sword books should be more trade-focused as far as price points are concerned. And as always, double check local universities and libraries near you since we can usually afford the big research collections!

Steady reading!

The Horse, the Wheel and Language is a really excellent book about the origins of the Indo-european peoples. Did you ever wonder why so many of our ancient gods were sky and/or thunder gods? Why Iranian, English and Norse are all one big language family?

I also love After the Ice. That's another approachable archaeology/prehistory book. The author does an amazing job of imagining what life was like as the great sheets of ice retreated and humans began to settle in villages. Just imagine the changes in how people saw their world as they gave up tens of thousands of years of wandering to settle in one place and learn how to coax a living out of the land.

One important thing to consider is that science tends to be extremely conservative. Making claims without evidence is heavily downvoted. Due to the nature of preservation of different materials, we can only examine a tiny slice ancient material culture.

Stones and bones are preferentially preserved over more ephemeral artifacts - fibrous material, wood, furs & feathers. But since we rarely see evidence of wooden or woven material from 15kya archaeologists can't say much about it - the silence inadvertently causes us to assume that 'cavemen*' only had stone tools and bone fishhooks. This is preposterous, of course.

There is evidence of woven fabrics from the impressions made on the surface of ceramics. That helps to push back the earliest evidence for textiles several thousands of years beyond any actual textiles themselves. Also, dating the differentiation between louse species has suggested strong evidence that humans were clothing themselves at least 70,000 ya. This sort of thing can place a bound on a certain technology.

But I can't stress enough that just because we don't have physical evidence that people knew how to, say, weave a basket, doesn't mean that they didn't do it. People may have been weaving baskets 100,000ya for all we know - but there's ZERO evidence for that, and so archaeologists and anthropologists won't be able to say that.

So to get back to your comment - It is almost a certainty that people living 100,000 - 15,000 ya were not anywhere close to as cavemannish as is popularly described. When using comparative methods, the view changes drastically. Tribes of people deeply familiar with all the plant and animal resources in their range; some moving great distances with the seasons, others moving less; technological sophistication relying on plant & animal materials; language? Oral tradition? Symbolic life?

As for sources, I mentioned a book in a different comment, but it's worth repeating:
After The Ice by Stephen Mithin. Good on the science, light speculation, no aliens (except his time-travelling narrator, of course)

I'm not familiar with that author, but this book by Bellah is a good one:
http://www.amazon.com/Religion-Human-Evolution-Paleolithic-Axial/dp/0674061438/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_3

Also The Robert Bellah Reader. As a 'romantic' scholar of religion who is also an atheist I really like his work.

Happy reading!

Edit, paragraphs. :)

The description of that history book depresses me a little.

I live in Europeland, teehee, and I haven't been exposed to any English language history books. But if you're up to it, I'd recommend like to recommend some, admittedly university level, literature.

The Heritage of World Civilizations is a basic primer and all around base book for Hist. A. here and is quite nice, but heavy as a car.

Now if you want prehistory, forgive the shameless promotion of archeology, I recommend The Human Past, it's a massive summary work and to my pleasure it has nice pictures too~.

The Human Past also has an online summary and study guide with flashcards, so you don't have to risk buying it and never reading it if you're uncertain.

I'm not ordering you around or dictating what you should be interested in, I just felt I wanted to contribute a little knowledge and give you some recommendations of books I've worked with in my studies.

You wanted to be part of the intelligentsia, but throughout your philosophical journey, you always based your convictions only on authority and tradition instead of on evidence and arguments. Don't you realize that this is the epitome of anti – intellectualism?

It is correct that the New Atheists aren't the pinnacle of atheistic thought and didn't contribute many new ideas to the academic debate of atheism vs. theism or religion. But this was never their goal, and it is also unnecessary, since the academic debate is already over for many decades. If you want to know why the arguments for theism are all complete nonsense and not taken seriously anymore, why Christianity is wrong just about everything and why apologists like Craig are dishonest charlatans who make a living out of fooling people, your reading list shouldn't be New Atheists, but rather something like this:

Colin Howson – Objecting to God

George H. Smith – Atheism: The Case Against God

Graham Oppy – Arguing about Gods

Graham Oppy – The Best Argument Against God

Herman Philipse – God in the Age of Science

J. L. Mackie – The Miracle of Theism

J. L. Schellenberg – The Wisdom to Doubt

Jordan Sobel – Logic and Theism

Nicholas Everitt – The Non-Existence of God

Richard Gale – On the Nature and Existence of God

Robin Le Poidevin – Arguing for Atheism

Stewart Elliott Guthrie – Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion

Theodore Drange – Nonbelief & Evil



[Avigor Shinan – From Gods to God: How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths and Legends] (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0827609086)

Bart Ehrman – The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings

Bart Ehrman – Jesus, Interrupted

Bart Ehrman – Misquoting Jesus

Burton L. Mack – Who Wrote the New Testament?

Helmut Koester – Ancient Christian Gospels

John Barton, John Muddiman – The Oxford Bible Commentary

John Dominic Crossan – Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography

Karen Armstrong – A History of God

Mark Smith – The Early History of God

Randel McCraw Helms – Who Wrote the Gospels?

Richard Elliott Friedman – Who Wrote the Bible?

Robert Bellah – Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age

Robert Walter Funk – The Gospel of Jesus

Why 37,000 years ago? That sounds like a rather specific age and suggests that you have a more specific question in mind. For example, are you interested in Homo sapiens/Neanderthal interactions? At that distant age, archaeologists find sites that give us snippets of behavior, rather than definitive knowledge of what everyday life was like, so your question would be hard to answer. I can say with some certainty though, that life would have been very different in different parts of the world during that time period. Modern humans were living throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, and Australia at that point, and each continent would require different adaptations.

My own research interests don't usually extend that far back in time, so I can't think of a good readable book detailing sites from 37,000 years ago. The best one I can recommend is After the Ice, which discusses how human life changes during the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene around the world.

Yes, I still spell "Neanderthal" with the "th." I'm stubborn like that. Just because the German spelling changes doesn't mean the English usage needs to follow suit, in my opinion.

Here's my personal favorite

"Wilson shows that not only did Atlantis exist but that the civilizing force behind it was the Neanderthals...the Neanderthals had sophisticated mathematical and astrological knowledge, including an understanding of the precession of the equinoxes, and that they possessed advanced telepathic abilities...These abilities, he demonstrates, have been transmitted through the ages by the various keepers of the hermetic tradition--including the Templars, Freemasons, and other secret societies. In the course of his investigation, Wilson also finds new information about historical links between the Masonic tradition and the Essenes that indicate that America was “discovered” long before Columbus set sail and that Jesus actually survived crucifixion and fled to France with his wife Mary Magdalene."

It's really got something for everyone.

If you like a more general view of all ancient civilizations, I would recommend The Human Past: World Prehistory and the Development of Human Societies (https://www.amazon.com/Human-Past-Prehistory-Development-Societies/dp/0500290636).

I would also recommend 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization collapsed as it gives a great view of how everything was connected.

If you are looking for something else, there is the list of excelent books from /r/AskHistorians (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books) or from /r/History (https://www.reddit.com/r/history/wiki/recommendedlist#wiki_the_classics)

Happy reading ;)

I'm sure how far back you want to start, but if you want to get into our ancient ancestors, I'd start with Before the Dawn. Follow that up with Cro-Magnon for a decent overview of the first modern human migrations into Europe. There is some overlap with After the Ice-Age, but the latter is a great resource describing the first transitions into agriculture.

The History of the Ancient World would be a good follow up; it's breadth is quite broad, starting with the ancient Sumerians and taking you up to the fall of the Roman Empire, but it's broken into small, readable chunks.

Hopefully this helps to get you started!

>I imagine a world where technological progress has been inhibited, and the world has been in a medieval state. (...)

In a "Medieval state", so, that can be summed up by much quicker technological advancement than either in Roman times or during the renaissance?

Medieval as in, religion had much less importance to civic life than in Rome (when religious festivals were a civic duty, which did put Christians at odds with traditions) and much less power than during the renaissance (when the papacy had regained independence from secular states)? a Church which basically is struggling to liberate itself from secular domination - until it did, at the very end of the middle ages, thanks to the Cluniac movement. A church that is the main driving engine of scientific progress (oh, this one will hurt some Redditors' head to no end.)

In short, a "middle ages" that would look nothing like the actual middle ages. This period was anything but low-tech or dominated by religion, and religious institutions such as the papacy and monasteries were incredibly important to scientific/technological progress. I wonder how much time before the public psyche catches up to historical research in this area. Because those views are totally at odds.

Sources:

• God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science
  
• The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450
  
• The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional and Intellectual Contexts - Cambridge Studies in the History of Science
  
• God and Reason in the Middle Ages
  
  

Here is a short list of books I have used in my studies of Anthropology. I don't have anything on cultural anthropology because it's not my focus (I focus on physical anthropology and archaeology).

Physical Anthropology:

• How Humans Evolved (7th Ed.) by Robert Boyd and Joan B. Silk
  
• People and Nature: An Introduction to Human Ecological Relations (1st Ed.) by Emilio F. Moran
  
  Linguistic Anthropology:
  
• [Living Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology (2nd Ed.)] (https://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-410786.html) by Laura M. Ahearn
  
  Archaeology (specifically of the American Southwest, where I study):
  
• The Human Past (3rd Ed.) edited by Chris Scarre
  
  Hope this helps!
  
  Also, if you need any information on Forensic Anthropology, I have about 45 textbooks I've dug up to prepare for graduate school, with about 6 introductory textbooks (you may want to read those physical anthropology texts beforehand).
  
  Best of luck to you!
  
  Note: Sorry about the formatting, I can't ever get bullets to work right

> Science. Religion has been fighting it for thousands of years.

I'm afraid that to even assume that science and religion existed as distinct concepts or endeavours thousands of years ago is a bit naïve, and this idea that they are eternally opposed is a very simplistic view that reflects the biases of anticlerical 19th Century historians more than the actual facts—it's only really been defended by people with a grudge against religion since a reappraisal of the subject in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s (and especially since the reappraisal by James Moore in The Post-Darwinian Controversies). Here are a few books that could help you develop a richer understanding of the historical relationship between science and religion.

• David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450 (University of Chicago Press, 2007)
  
• E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (Routledge, 1931)
  
• Gary B. Ferngren, ed., Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction (John Hopkins University Press, 2002)
  
• Ronald L. Numbers, ed., Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion (Harvard University Press, 2009)
  
  These would probably be illuminating reading as well.
  
  
• Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (University of Chicago Press, 1962)
  
• Brian Davies, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford University Press, 2004)
  
  > Here is just another surrender by a guy at the top of the money chain.
  
  No one interested in the subject should be under the impression that what the Pope has said is anything new. Eminent Catholic theologians like John Henry Newman found Darwin's theory of natural selection consistent with Christianity when it was published, and Pope Pius XII very famously affirmed that there was no intrinsic conflict between them in his 1950 encyclical Humani generis. As for the Big Bang, it is downright foolish to characterise the Church as "surrendering" to a theory that was formulated by a Catholic priest in the first place.

Just finished The Good Soldiers. A beautifully written and very moving account of US a Army Ranger battalion in Baghdad in 2007, during the 'surge'.

Halfway through After the Ice. A bit of paleontology / anthropology. Specifically about the era just pre-civilisation. That is when humanity was settling out of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and was tentatively domesticating plants and animals. Still prehistoric, as we have no writing from that era. (And they were almost certainly illiterate).

I don't read much fiction anymore because truth is stranger than fiction, but when I do, it's generally a classic of one sort or another.

I love my local library!

Those guys are horrible at history. I would recommend going to /r/badhistory for rebuttals, in the meantime I found some books that I think can really help out debunking this myth.

Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction

Philosophy of Science: An Historical Anthology

Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion

When Science and Christianity Meet

The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution

The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450

The Savior of Science

For the Glory of God

The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science

The History of Science from Augustine to Galileo

Yes this is a long list but that's because it's studied so often ;). I hope this helps.

I like the Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations, very good reference for maps. Jean Manco's Ancestral Journeys and Blood of the Celts both have maps that look particularly good as well, in a purely aesthetic sense.

Quite possibly yes. *gaelic or pictish

Further reading. I actually spoke here on Reddit to an anthropologist working on this island and he read this book after I recommended it and acknowledged that he has to agree this is the best evidence and explanation he's heard for the questions posed by their research

https://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Skara-Brae-Neolithic-Scotland/dp/1620555735

Read some of Graham Hancock's stuff. He has quite a few interviews on Youtube if you want to browse through them. When I have time, I'll find one where he discusses this and post a link. I've read several of his non-fiction books and he does excellent research on the material. FIngerprint of the gods is excellent, but Underworld is what I found most fascinating about stuff that existed 10,000+ years ago, who built it and what happened to them:

http://www.amazon.com/Underworld-The-Mysterious-Origins-Civilization/dp/1400049512/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413657393&sr=8-1&keywords=graham+hancock+underworld

Lots of school, reading, knapping experimentation, and experience. I don't, by any means, know everything there is to know and it takes years to fully understand some concepts. And with new research comes new information, often overturning certain "core" understandings and definitions.

If you're interested in lithics, I would suggest Lithics: Macroscopic Approaches to Analysis by William Andrefsky. This was the textbook for my lithics class in college and I still pull it out for reference. I'm pretty sure a university library (or public, for that matter) would have this.

This is well towards the end of and past the period you're asking about, but I really enjoyed After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000 - 5,000BC. It's got this interesting narrative conceit where the author conjures the spirit of a 19th century paleoanthropologist and sends him around the world to various human habitations, so the viewer sees them through his eyes and what would otherwise be a dry survey of archeological digs becomes more like a story being told by a knowledgable person. The goal is to describe how the world changed during the last great phase of human pre-history and created the conditions necessary to propel humans into civilization. One part that sticks in my head is from very early on and its how he moves from a group that live in seemingly idyllic conditions in the levant (IIRC) to another group suffering through a harsh Ice Age winter, huddled together and all with their backs to a fierce wind. The difference in mobility and group-size really stuck with me.

>For example, men have always been the ones tasked with dangerous occupations like hunting, fighting, as well as less obvious ones like leadership.
Women, on the other hand are almost always tasked with domestic duties of some sort and caring for the sick, elderly, and young.

While I don't disagree with you, I would be careful to make grand assumptions about historical gender roles like you did there. Here is some information that contradicts your assumption of pre-neolithic gender roles.

>In The Invisible Sex, the authors present an exciting new look at prehistory, arguing that women invented all kinds of critical materials, including the clothing necessary for life in colder climates, the ropes used to make rafts that enabled long-distance travel by water, and nets used for communal hunting.

Truth is, we still have a lot to learn about our ancient ancestor's social arrangements. There is a lot to still discover.

TL;DR The site's real, the clip is misleading.

The structures at Gobekli Tempe are real, and their origins are indeed something of a mystery. There is real, honest-to-goodness archaeology going on at the site. This video clip however, shows quite clearly why a great deal of the programming on the History Channel needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Here are a few issues I have with the clip that's been presented.

1. The overly dramatic tone which is more of an irritant than anything else. We get it, History Channel, this place is old and not much is known about it. Do we really need the ominous music?
   
   
2. 'Experts'. They're not - at least, they're not experts in the subject of the video. The first is Linda Moulten Howe, who's primary 'expertise' seems to lie in the area of crop circles and cattle mutilations, not ancient archaeology. Why she is here is puzzling... until you meet expert number two; Graham Hancock.
   
   Hancock is famous for writing such 'alt-history' books as 'Fingerprints of the Gods' and 'Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization', which assert that all human civilizations are the product of an ancient, hyper-advanced civilization (like Atlantis, for example), that either inspired or outright taught the younger civilizations that followed. His views are, to put it mildly, not supported by either the archaeological community, nor by the archaeological evidence.
   
   Expert number three is Robert M. Schoch, a geologist and geophysicist who's current pet theory is that all ancient pyramids (Egyptian, Mayan, etc.) are the products of an ancient, global civilization that was destroyed by some pre-historical cataclysm in ages past, possibly by a century-long rain of asteroids.
   
   Next on our list of History Channel approved 'experts', is one Andrew Collins, author of 'Gateway to Atlantis', a book which alleges that ancient Middle-Eastern civilizations may have had transoceanic contact with ancient meso-Americans, possibly via contact with Atlantis or some other ancient global civilization.
   
   Oh Gawd... at 6:00 in the clip, the 'documentary' begins to speculate if this find has anything to do with Noah's Ark.
   
   Next up, Phillip Coppens: ancient aliens, 2012, ancient global civilizations and catastrophes. Seeing the pattern here?
   
   Most, if not all of these 'experts' are cult archaeologists who have, at one time or another, flirted with or explicitly endorsed the concept of 'hyperdiffusion', which is the belief that all ancient cultures sprang from an older, advanced, global culture such as Atlantis, Lemuria, or Mu. This is one species of pseudohistory that has been quite popular over the years. The ideas that are stated (or sometimes simply implied) in this clip are a fairly obvious attempt to graft the assertions of the pseudoarchaeologists onto an actual archaeological site. The video even concludes by splashing a 'See the Evidence: Check out Ancient Aliens on History Channel' graphic. Others in this thread have warned against dismissing a claim because one doesn't approve of the source, and that is generally a good rule to follow, but in this case, a fair degree of skepticism is warranted. A good analogy here would be that these 'experts' are to the field of archaeology what homeopaths are to the field of medicine. This clip isn't history; it's pseudohistorical speculation attempting to masquerade as legitimate archaeological inquiry.
   

I would say your intuitive thoughts are probably pretty spot on. You might find this book by Graham Handcock to be an interesting read. I know I did. :-)

So you're looking for hundreds of pages of open-ended history? Sounds like a tall order for an NSQ question. :-)

You might enjoy this book.

I was absolutely fascinated by The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450. It's considerably deeper than Bryson's book (which I also found to be fantastic), but it really covers a lot of fascinating material about the development of science.

Not sure if it's exactly what you're looking for, but I enjoyed "Britain BC" by the (Time Team) archaeologist Francis Pryor. It's (obviously) biased towards the archaeology, rather than just discussing belief, but it's a good read.

https://www.amazon.com/Britain-BC-Ireland-Before-Romans/dp/000712693X

I really enjoy reading Francis Pryor's "Britain BC"

http://www.amazon.com/Britain-BC-Ireland-Before-Romans/dp/000712693X

It covers a longer time-span than just the Bronze Age, but it is quite well written.

I'm reading this currently and loving it: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0674019997/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Maybe they should read Into The Wild or read about hunter gathers back 20,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age and realize how much effort there is to truly living off the land.
Have a read of this book for a bit more info

http://www.amazon.com/After-Ice-Global-History-000-5000/dp/0674019997/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211761944&sr=8-1

They weren't matriarchal. Women did not rule. They may have been matrifocal, but I don't even know if that's clearly known. The role and power of women in Babylon was played up by some 1970's feminist academics, but that view has come under criticism:

Here's an example: The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory by Cynthia Eller.

I've been reading After the Ice as of late, can recommend

> My main point is not, wah wah men had this bad or wah wah women had that bad. My point re patriarchy is that it's operating on the level of the social order. It's systemic.

Nope, the blame patriarchy is an utter myth. We don't live in a patriarchy at all. If anything it resembles more of a matriarchy than anything else: 1. women have majority vote, 2. special privileges, and support for women only, 3. millions of tax payer money goes to organizations for women who have radical leaders such as NOW and abuse it to wage an ongoing campaign against males and anything masculine 4. men bear all responsibly still 5. feminist myths such as the wage gap, 1 in 4 are rape myth 6. draft only for men 7. harsher sentences for male criminals and women who get away with a slap on the wrist 8. millions of single mothers and bastard children, 9. corrupt family courts who don't allow good fathers to see their kids. 10. consequent rise in youth crime and degradation of society 11. men who have significant shorter life expectations do most dirty work 12. far majority of homeless are men 13. little attention to men's issues by mass media.

> My point re women previously is that they didn't have full autonomy or the opportunity to operate independently of a male figure.

That's not true there's been colleges, universities for women exclusively as well. And "Roman women were allowed to own businesses among other "equal rights". Babylonian women had suffrage, child support, and alimony!"

> You're also not wrong when you say that in the past life was shit for everybody. My point though is that chivalry as you call it is an example of a patriarchal system.

No, chivalry arose due to the preferences for men and women to do certain types of work. Women didn't want to risk their lives such as: slaying beasts in the wilderness, or do battles so men were shamed into doing so by their wives, and families. Keep in mind in a long time ago it was a very different world than it is today. It's men who tamed the world for women.

Chivalry is in no-way patriachal. Chivalry is an attempt to make nice to women. Women were the ones interpreting this as imposing dependence on men. For example when a husband opens the door for his wife, he lets her through because she deserves it.

Chivalry was merely men protecting women on behalf of other men....it was necessary to protect women when the world was much tougher.

Also see:

> For decades, Gloria Steinem, Riane Eisler, Marija Gimbutas and other feminist authors have painted a picture of a golden age before the onset of patriarchy, a time when women ruled the earth, and all the world worshipped the Goddess. This bold and provocative book marshals archeological evidence to demonstrate that this gynocentric vision is a myth, and a pernicious one at that. Eller acknowledges that some women find the myth of matriarchal prehistory empowering but insists that it ultimately undermines genuine reform. A myth, she points out, is a weak foundation for a social movement. More to the point, gynocentric myths, she says, perpetuate the same stereotypical notions of femininity that have always served as tools of sexist oppression. Celebrating the positive virtues of motherhood, relationality, embodiedness and ecocentrism as universal feminine traits obscures genuine differences among women and limits female autonomy; as the saying goes, a pedestal is as confining as any small place. Eller's previous book, Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America, sympathetically described women's spiritual quests for self-validation and empowerment. Her new work affirms these goals while cautioning feminists against letting their fantasies about a past matriarchy distract them from taking real steps to end patriarchy today. Passionately argued, engagingly written, this vital book is certain to inspire wide--and much-needed--debate. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Matriarchal-Prehistory-Invented-Future/dp/0807067938/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1318852970&sr=1-1

> I've already waded through the front page of this sub and I've seen grievances against men by women (some real, some imagined), misguided bullshit, and just a smidge of informed content.

No, most content here are genuine issues. The whole list of men's issues that you commented on, are Facts that you can look up. This is my last reply to you for I have better things to do sorry.

Perhaps this isn't a big issue, but it makes me doubt your 'neutrality':

>many ancient peoples had heavily matriarchal societies

I strongly doubt you'd be able to support that claim. There have certainly been egalitarian cultures prior to the advent of agriculture. But the existence of matriarchies simply isn't supported by the facts. It's basically a feminist mythology. See Cynthia Eller's The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory.

Another fantastic reference for the pre-historic peopling of the Americas is After the Ice (Harvard University Press, 2006) by Steven Mithen.

While the book focuses on the worldwide rise of human cultures after the end of the ice age, the chapters on the Americas do go into some depth on the different archeological groupings of pre-Columbian era Native Americans and examine several of the sites that have challenged the Bering Land Bridge theory due to their age and lack of relation to later cultures.

http://www.amazon.com/Religion-Human-Evolution-Paleolithic-Axial/dp/0674061438/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405903928&sr=8-1&keywords=bellah+religion+in+human+evolution

Britain BC: life in Britain and Ireland before the Romans.