Customer Reviews

The Time Before History: 5 Million Years of Human Impact

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Tudge has an interesting book with "The Time Before History." He spends a great deal of the book laying the groundwork for the appearence of the ancestors of humans, with detailed discussions of geology, climate, and the evolution of fauna and flora. The chapter on prehistoric creatures was pretty interesting, and considering the dearth of popular works on extinct mammals make this book a worthwhile read alone.

Tudge though is at his best when describing the various types of early humans and protohumans -from the various types of Australopithecines to Homo sapiens - and how they evolved, how they lived, and in some cases, how they spread. Useful are his discussion of ecomorphs and how the generalized ecomorphs of primates favored the development of bipedal, tool-using, intelligent protohumans, and his coverage of the diet of australopithecines and early humans and how this affected our evolution, as well as what we know of these beings. Tudge also provides a lot of interesting theories and information regarding the spread of not only Homo sapiens into the world but Homo erectus before him; also theories as to what happened to the Neanderthals and if they were a seperate species or not are detailed as well.

The Tudge book is not perfect though. I think he spends too much time on background prior to discussions of early man. Though interesting, they take up a sizeable section of the book. Some of the asides in the chapter on extinct mammals while interesting are controversial, though he does provide citations for those interested in checking on things. Examples include his mentioning of the theory that giant ground sloths may have been arboreal, that the mastodon genus Cuvieronius may have survived in Central America until several centuries after Christ, and that the dwarf mammoth of Wrangel Island (which survived into historic times, this has been well documented) is actually pictured on a pharaoh's tomb in Egypt, according to some having been illustrated when one was presented as a gift!

Still, I wouldn't let some of these controversial statements steer potential readers away from this book. It still provides decent coverage of extinct mammals, concepts in paleontology, and a good coverage of eartly man, his development, and spread around the globe.

Colin Tudge is a very concerned man. Here, he constructs one of the most complete pictures of human evolution's course. Drawing on geology, meteorology and biology in setting a framework, Tudge explains how and to what extent Homo sapiens emerged from Africa to override the planet. That's a hefty task, particularly in less than four hundred pages. Especially given that he allocates ten per cent of those pages to assessing the future. Tudge's concern about human impact on the environment is the theme of his other works, but this one rests on a solid foundation of evolutionary biology.

Tudge Dances Through Time in explaining the movements of continents and the impact of that mobility on life forms. Movement, an adventure life normally avoids, is forced by changes in environment. In seeking to stay with the familiar, life migrates in response to change. With environments continually shifting, life must adapt to survive. Humans have broken the pattern, invading the globe's many environments. We are the most adaptable species to emerge.

The price of our adaptation has been the extinction of many species, particularly large prey animals and birds. On every continent large birds and mammals ceased leaving fossil remains shortly after the appearance of Home Sapiens on the scene. The timing is too consistent to be purely coincidental and the ensuing patterns of human behaviour show we remain essentially ignorant of our impact on Nature's balance. We shouldn't be surprised at his finding. Today we face decimated cod and salmon populations. Whales remain under assault in the face of a 'moratorium' on their killing. The number of populations exterminated due to our occupation of their habitat is beyond counting. Tudge's concern is valid and it must be hoped infectious given the background he provides.

Those who grizzle about Tudge being "wordy" are misleading you. He's precise with words, although this book must set some kind of record for superlatives. New readers take note: Tudge has one disturbing habit. He will introduce a term [edentates, for example] and never find an alternative thereafter. When you encounter a term you don't know, make certain you understand it before continuing. This habit detracts neither from the worth, clarity of presentation nor value of this fine book. At first read the lack of a Bibliography seemed a flaw. Second thoughts showed that a suggested reading list would likely have doubled the size of the book. Build the bibliography yourself as you encounter authors and titles in the text. If the citations are unfamiliar to you, spend the energy. Tudge is too good an introduction to the topic to ignore.

I just taught this book in a Philosophy and the Environment course, and I would jope that my students enjoyed it as much as I did.

An excellent overview of all aspects of the earth sciences (geological disasters, ice ages, asteroid collisions, atmospheric chemistry, plant and animal life). The concept of the "ecomorph" was a fascinating one that I had never heard of before but will not soon forget following Tudge's lucid presentation. He also makes some eye-opening remarks about the impact of agriculture and the human species in general on many now-extinct or soon-to-be-extinct animal species. I actually found the final chapter slightly anticlimactic: not bad, but not nearly as riveting as some of the earlier ones.

Even so, this book has turned me into a nature enthusiast for the first time since early childhood, and will surely be only of the first of hundreds of books I will read on the topics he discusses. In that sense, Tudge has had a huge impact on my life, and if you read this book attentively it is likely that he can do the same for you.

One million years: such a time frame can witness mountain-building and erosion, cycles of climate change due to changes in the earth's orbit and tilt, evolution and speciation, and the origin of Homo sapiens. For most people, anything that took place before written history is lumped together in a generic, expansive "prehistory." In The Time Before History, author Colin Tudge makes a compelling case to consider a million years as a viable, practical unit of political time. In such a world, Tudge argues, humans would see themselves in the light of their formative and evolutionary history, a history where small actions have long-term consequences. Living in a society where politicians often do not consider time in units longer than election terms, we are a present-obsessed culture. Arguing that this stems from a lack of context for our emergence as a capable, dominant species, Tudge sets about correcting that "truncated" sense of history.

To do this, he assumes that the reader is unfamiliar (or nearly so) with the long-term processes that accompanied and occasionally guided the evolution of hominids. To compensate, he spends the first half of the book addressing basic principles of geology, evolutionary biology, and climatology in order to frame the emergence of our species in ecological processes. He then follows these up with an overview of fellow mammals during this interval and some of the governing principles of animal biology. Readers without a science background will find these chapters informative, clear, and very accessible; Tudge is an excellent author, and walks the fine line between scholarship and anecdotal writing with an easy grace. More advanced readers will still find some value in these early chapters as a concise review, though the well-organized format makes it easy to skim or skip familiar topics.

Having established a common ground on which to proceed, Tudge then devotes a hefty segment to the emergence of humans, which he follows up with his speculation as to "what makes us so special?" (read: successful) as a species. He next addresses the beginning of farming as the turning point in human culture and the beginning of our (very early) impact on the earth. These are perhaps some of the most fascinating chapters in the book, and the author gives fair treatment to a number of different theories before offering his own, well-crafted ideas. My only complaint is that, having set up so much of the book with the appropriate background, Tudge hasn't left himself nearly enough time to devote to these fascinating topics. While I did not always agree with his conclusions, I found them to be thought-provoking; Colin Tudge is a very intelligent person with a varied background.

There are a couple of details that keep The Time Before History from being a five-star book, though they could easily be addressed should the author decide to publish a second edition. First, the lack of bibliography makes this less of a valuable resource, as Tudge draws from a wide range of disciplines and sources. Secondly, the inclusion of a glossary would be of use to readers unfamiliar with some of the jargon, and I would reccommend that readers create their own as they go along. Lastly, the subtitle is misleading; Tudge does not in fact address "five million years of human impact" explicitly, but rather gives context for human evolution in a chaginging world; the impact is implied. The author wants the reader to do a bit of critical thinking, rather than spoon-feeding facts and theories, and so in this case the geological and biological contexts set up in the first half of the book are just as important as the actual developments addressed later.

In a final section, Tudge projects human evolution and impact into the future, and his speculations and concerns are an execellent conclusion to a well-crafted, fascinating, and enjoyable work of non-fiction. The Time Before History is one of the most thought-provoking books on the subject I've read since Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, and indeed would make an excellent companion to that book, as it deals with subject matter that takes place before the emergence of advanced human societies. The book has much to offer both unfamiliar laypeople, students, and scholars. Anyone with an interest in anthropology, archaeology, sociology, environmental science, and evolution will find something of value in The Time Before History.

~Jacquelyn Gill

A book worth reading if intrested in anthropology.

Tudge starts out with a Good review of mammalian evolution hard to find in its detail discussing population ranges and the advantages/disadvantages of big mammals for survival.

The best part of the book is the overview of the extinction theory which proposes that it was not climate change. but human impact that brought so many species to extinction at the end of the ice age. Tudge goes into great detail on this citing evidence on all continents.

The final chapter is also intresting dealing with how humanity can survive the enviromental damage done to the earth and survive as a species.

A good read.

Colin Tudge is a concerned man. Constructing one of the most complete pictures of human evolution's course, he draws on geology, meteorology and biology in setting a framework. Tudge then explains how and to what extent Homo sapiens emerged from Africa to override the planet. That's a hefty task, particularly in less than four hundred pages. Especially given that he allocates ten per cent of those pages to assessing the future. Tudge's concern about human impact on the environment is the theme of his other works, but this one rests on a solid foundation of evolutionary biology.

Tudge Dances Through Time in explaining the movements of continents and the impact of that mobility on lifeforms. Movement, an adventure life normally avoids, is forced by changes in environment. In seeking to stay with the familiar, life migrates in response to change. With environments continually shifting, life must adapt to survive. Humans have broken the pattern, invading the globe's many environments. We are the most adaptable species to emerge.

The price of our adaptation has been the extinction of many species, particularly large prey animals and birds. On every continent large birds and mammals ceased leaving fossil remains shortly after the appearance of Home Sapiens on the scene. The timing is too consistent to be purely coincidental and the ensuing patterns of human behaviour show we remain essentially ignorant of our impact on Nature's balance. We shouldn't be surprised at his finding. Today we face decimated cod and salmon populations. Whales remain under assualt in the face of a 'moratorium' on their killing. The number of populations extermined due to our occupation of their habitat is beyond counting. Tudge's concern is valid and it must be hoped infectious given the background he provides.

Those who grizzle about Tudge being "wordy" are misleading you. He's precise with words, although this book must set some kind of record for superlatives. New readers take note: Tudge has one disturbing habit. He will introduce a term [edentates, for example] and never find an alternative thereafter. When you encounter a term you don't know, make certain you understand it before continuing. This habit detracts neither from the worth, clarity of presentation nor value of this fine book. At first read the lack of a Bibliography seemed a flaw. Second thoughts showed that a suggested reading list would likely have doubled the size of the book. Build the bibliography yourself as you encounter authors and titles in the text. If the citations are unfamiliar to you, spend the energy. Tudge is too good an introduction to the topic to ignore.

This book is engagingly written and enlightening in its content. Its object, to expand our perspective on the history and the impact on the planet of our genus Homo from its beginning about 5 million years ago, could hardly be more timely. Tudge integrates knowledge from the disciplines of geology, anthropology, archaeology, climatology, and even game theory to provide a framework for understanding.

I like his clear explication and illustration of evolutionary principles and mechanisms, in particular his emphasis on the unifying concept of the ecomorph: the outcome of the process by which evolution fits organisms to ecological niches. I like his courage as a non-expert to suggest that the idea of progress may have some usefulness in evolutionary thought. Similarly, Tudge reminds us that whereas Lamarck's fourth law on the inheritance of acquired characteristics should be rightly rejected, his second law, that the production of new organs results from continued environmental pressure in a particular direction, can contribute much to understanding of evolutionary history.

In sum, I recommend this book because it accomplishes what it sets out to do and makes a start on an answer to the ant in the cautionary tale called "Ant Research" to be found in the book "The Magic Monastery" by Sufi savant Idries Shah:

It took a certain scholar a lifetime of experiment before he could communicate with an ant. The one he eventually found was a very wise and very ancient insect; but at the risk of causing it pain, the scholar said: 'Our species is immeasurably superior to yours. We study you, and yet you cannot even begin to observe us.' The ant said: 'If you, poor man, only knew about yesterday, you would understand today - and also be prepared for tomorrow.' The scholar confessed himself confused by such statements, so the ant continued: 'Millions of years ago, we ants worked out what was going to happen on this earth. We knew that your species would come and ruin almost everything. So we did the only thing open to intelligent beings with complete information. We destroyed the data and forbade the breeding of ants who would understand, organizing ourselves in special colonies. Now and again we have a throwback - an ant who can see our miserable and irreversible fate. But untold myriads of heedless ants are happy; and will be so, until our time comes. That is the solution for ants. You humans, on the other hand, you have not even reached the stage when you know what may happen to you; and whether or not there is anything you can do about it.'

What I enjoyed most about this enormously informative and eye-opening book, was the author's accessible, absorbing, and almost poetic style of writing; it transformed what potentially would be a terribly dry, recondite subject into a revelatory experience. I recommend it for anyone who suffered through Earth Science and Geology textbooks in high school and college.

A valuable and intellectually exciting overview of "how the world works." Includes plate tectonics, climatology, and evolution, with a review of human evolution. Interesting and provocative ideas about extinction. Actually provides a different and persuasive point of view of our current, desperate situation. Unnecessarily detailed and quite tedious review of various families (orders?) of vertebrates, which I skimmed and skipped at will (another reviewer bestowed special praise on this section, however). Well worth reading, with the above caveat. Regrettably lacking in references. Alan Nicoll

I liked part of this book, especially some of the new ideas he brings up, but I have been unable to find any references to the ones I have tried to pursue further (such as weather control projects in progress in Israel). This leads me to wonder if some of the parts that contain original and stimulating ideas are actually simply untrue or misrepresentations.

For example, he seemed to deliberately misrepresent (or misunderstand) the parallel evolution theory of human origins, so that he could re-present it in more convincing terms as his own original idea.

All in all, the fact checking seems weak, (eg, a change of 6 degrees centigrade is equivalent to a change of 36 degress farenheight !?!? Obviously someone with a pocket calculator mindlessly punched numbers into the temperature formula to get that one) and the lack of references for some of his assertions leaves me wondering about their accuracy. This is a real shame, because a few of his ideas are ones I had not encountered before (for example, exposed rock faces having a major effect on the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and hence having a major impact on global climate), but I reluctantly have to say that I'm not sure he is a reliable source.