Research Catalog

Title

Atlas of a lost world : travels in ice age America / Craig Childs ; illustrations by Sarah Gilman.

Author

Childs, Craig, 1967-

Publication

New York : Pantheon Books, [2018]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Gilman, Sarah,

Description

xvi, 269 pages : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

• "From the author of Apocalyptic Planet comes a vivid travelogue through prehistory that traces the arrival of the first people in North America at least twenty thousand years ago and the artifacts that tell of their lives and fates. In Atlas of a Lost World, Craig Childs upends our notions of where these people came from and who they were. How they got here, persevered, and ultimately thrived is a story that resonates from the Pleistocene to our modern era. The lower sea levels of the Ice Age exposed a vast land bridge between Asia and North America, but the land bridge was not the only way across. Different people arrived from different directions, and not all at the same time. The first explorers of the New World were few, their encampments fleeting. The continent they reached had no people but was inhabited by megafauna--mastodons, giant bears, mammoths, saber-toothed cats, five-hundred-pound panthers, enormous bison, and sloths that stood one story tall. The first people were hunters (Paleolithic spear points are still encrusted with the proteins of their prey) but they were wildly outnumbered and many would themselves have been prey to the much larger animals. Atlas of a Lost World chronicles the last millennia of the Ice Age: the violent oscillations and retreat of glaciers, the clues and traces that document the first encounters of early humans, and the animals whose presence governed the humans' chances for survival. A blend of science and personal narrative reveals how much has changed since the time of mammoth hunters, and how little. Across unexplored landscapes yet to be peopled, readers will see the Ice Age, and their own age, in a whole new light."--Dust jacket.
• Scientists squabble over the locations and dates for human arrival in the New World. The first explorers were few, encampments fleeting. At some point in time, between twenty and forty thousand years ago, sea levels were low enough that a vast land bridge was exposed between Asia and North America-- but was not the only way across. Childs provides an unsparing, vivid, revelatory travelogue through prehistory that traces the arrival of the First People in North America twenty thousand years ago, the megafauna they found here, and the artifacts that enable us to imagine their lives and fates. -- adapted from publisher info

Subjects

• Paleoecology
• Mammals, Fossil
• Pleistocene Geologic Epoch
• From 10 thousand to 2 million years ago
• Paleoecology > North America
• Mammals, Fossil > North America
• North America
• Paleoecology > Pleistocene
• Glacial epoch > North America
• Paleo-Indians > North America
• Prehistoric peoples > North America
• NATURE > Ecology
• HISTORY > North America
• SCIENCE > Paleontology

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Land bridge: date unknown -- Inner Beringia: 25,000 years ago -- House of ice: 20,000 years ago -- The long coast: 17,000 years ago -- Playground of giants: 45,000 to 15,000 years ago -- Emergence: 16,000 to 14,000 years ago -- A dangerous Eden: 14,500 years ago -- Cult of the fluted point: 13,500 years ago -- The last mammoth hunt: 13,000 to 12,000 years ago -- American Babylon: 12,800 to 11,800 years ago -- The party at the beginning of the world: 11,000 years ago.

ISBN

• 9780307908650
• 0307908658
• 9780307908667 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

• 2017033037
• 99980779983
• 40028160398

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries