The last lost world : ice ages, human origins, and the invention of the Pleistocene / Lydia V. Pyne and Stephen J. Pyne.

Author/creator Pyne, Lydia
Other author Pyne, Stephen J., 1949-
Format Book
Publication InfoNew York : Viking, 2012.
Description306 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
Subjects
Geology, Stratigraphic--Pleistocene.
Paleogeography--Pleistocene.
Human beings--Origin.
Science--Philosophy. --History.

Contents Prologue: Mossel Bay, South Africa -- pt. 1. How the Pleistocene got its ice. Rift ; Ice ; Story -- pt. 2. The great game. Footnotes to Plato ; Out of Africa ; Missing links ; New truths, heresies, superstitions ; The ancients and the moderns -- pt. 3.How the Pleistocene lost its tale. The hominin who would be king ; The Anthropocene -- Epilogue: Rift redux.
Abstract An investigation of the Pleistocene's dual character, as a geologic time, and as a cultural idea. The Pleistocene is the epoch of geologic time closest to our own, a time of ice ages, global migrations, and mass extinctions--of woolly rhinos, mammoths, giant ground sloths, and not least, early species of Homo. It's the world that created ours. But outside that environmental story there exists a parallel narrative that describes how our ideas about the Pleistocene have emerged. This story explains the place of the Pleistocene in shaping intellectual culture, and the role of a rapidly evolving culture in creating the idea of the Pleistocene and in establishing its dimensions. This second story addresses how the epoch, its Earth-shaping events, and its creatures, both those that survived and those that disappeared, helped kindle new sciences and a new origins story as the sciences split from the humanities as a way of looking at the past.--From publisher description.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references and index.
LCCN 2011038464
ISBN9780670023639 (hbk.)
ISBN0670023639 (hbk.)

Availability

Library Location Call Number Status Item Actions
Joyner General Stacks QE697 .P96 2012 ✔ Available Place Hold