The Age of Everything: How Science Explores the Past

Hedman begins with a fascinating chapter on the passage of time recorded by Mayan hieroglyphics and another on the wobble in earth’s orbit indicated by minute variations in the orientation of Egyptian pyramids—both in a way illustrating the ingenuity and imagination of pre-scientific societies. The more modern time-measure techniques introduced next sound as poetic as they are scientific: tree rings, magnetized volcanic rock, sunspots, glacial ice cores, deep-water coral. Finally, radiocarbon and other isotope-derived methods take us into astronomical and cosmological realms, demystifying stars and deep space—but with humanity and our natural world so far away, the feeling is cold and empty, and, in Hedman’s telling, wholly show more lacking in poetry.

Victory Storm King Stout
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