Origins: How Earth's History Shaped Human History

Origins is a fascinating demonstration of the many ways geology (and other earth sciences) has shaped human history. Some of it is well known like the Black Belt in the American South East. But much of it is new, or at least seems new when told as a whole. Civilizations it turns out arose along the fault lines of continental plates because this is where minerals and other resources tend to be most available. The human species arose in the rift valley of East Africa because the unique geography creates a wet-period/dry-period "pump" that sped up evolution and eventually pushed humans out of Africa. It keeps going page after page of perspectives and ideas. Your interest in this might be equal to how interesting you already find the topic show more of geology and human history. I see the influence of geology everywhere in my home region, the earth is a strong but largely invisible background force on people's lives, it takes some consideration to see its influence, however it is everywhere from the large to the small and when you discover something it's a eureka moment. Origins does a good job at showing many large-scale examples I never knew about (and many I did). Everything seems to come back to plate tectonics, that is what made the earth and the earth is what made us. Well worth the journey across time and place. One should remember that just as demography is not destiny, neither is geology, yet both are powerful background forces that like small waves can push the giant ship of history. show less

This book was a joy to read: it was engagingly written and felt securely anchored in the understanding of science and history. I don't think there was much I didn't already know something about already, but the book did an excellent job of showing those things in context, and from a new angle. I could have easily read for another 300 pages.

In Origins, Lewis Dartnell takes a similar approach to that of [a:Jared Diamond|256|Jared Diamond|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1456487863p2/256.jpg] in [b:Guns, Germs, and Steel|1842|Guns, Germs, and Steel The Fates of Human Societies|Jared Diamond|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1453215833l/1842._SY75_.jpg|2138852], using a long view to explain why human development progressed in the way it did. In this case, the billions-years process of geology.



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 show more 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. show less

I bought this after hearing an interview with Lewis Dartnell on ABC Radio, in which he had plenty of interesting stories anecdotes to tell. Sadly the book doesn't quite live up to this but its still quite interesting.

The overall theme is how plate techtonics have created our world, and shaped the development of humans in sometimes surprising ways. This is interesting enough as far as it goes - yes we all understand that human civilizations found it easier to develop East - West than North - South due to similarities in soil, climate, temperature etc moving in that direction but Jared Diamond and others have already discussed this in detail - Diamond famously posing the question as to why the Spanish invaded the Aztecs and not the other show more way around.

Dartnell is more interesting on maritime history particularly the Portuguese innovations in navigation that opened up the fast route to India - and by accident led to the discovery of Brazil - and how using the Roaring 40s in the Southern Hemisphere effectively opened up a super highway to Indonesia, but also led to the wreck of many a ship that missed its exit ramp, off the coast of Western Australia

So its interesting, but is told rather in the tone of a TV documentary; perhaps thats what it is, or will be. I was hoping for something a little more show less

Interesting but read like a book of trivia.

Fascinating combination of geology, geography, technology and history. In a very readable style. Its scope can be gathered from excerpts from the bibliography:
- The shaping of modern human immune systems by multi-regional admixture with archaic humans.
- Climate change: biological and human aspects.
- Loess in Europe.
- The Barbegal water mill in its environment.
- The sea and civilization.
- Rich petroleum source rocks.
- Anthropogenic carbon release rate unprecedented during the past 66 million years.

A good book, well written, and very interesting