Reddit reviews After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000–5000 BC

> I think Neanderthals were as intelligent as Homo sapiens.

That's a fairly minority position ...

> My speculation is that they never got 10000 years of climate stability like humans enjoyed during the Holocene.

Except they did. Neanderthals existed between 350kya and 42kya. Now look at the global temperatures for that period. So there was a warm period between 110,000 and 125,000 years ago that would be about as warm as it is now (omitting very recent climate change effects for the moment).

> OTOH, humans were lucky enough to live during a time were the global temperature remained +- 1 C for ten thousands years.

Ok, first of all, the term "humans" applies both to Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Second of all, the prehistoric agricultural theories have settled on the idea that basic domestication of cereal crops occurred in at most a few centuries; i.e., the only thing preventing homo sapiens from developing agriculture was a relatively brief period of time when climate allowed for it.

(Just look at the Kebaran -> Natufian development relative to the Bølling-Allerød interstadial and the Younger Dryas. The Ice Age stopped briefly, they tried to adopt sedentism and were on their way leaving archeological evidence, then the ice age came back, and it pwned them. And when the ice age ended for real, modern societies basically formed. This is all described in Steven Mithen's After the Ice in the "Western Asia" chapter at the beginning).

Third of all, 15,000 years seems like plenty of time (the 110,000 to 125,000 time period I was referring to) to develop agriculture even if, for some reason, you are running somewhat slower than the Natufians.

> Technologies like agriculture and writing had time to grow and develop in a relatively stable climate.

Writing follows from advanced cultures growing out of agricultural societies. That is to say, agriculture by itself is the essential bottleneck of concern, writing is almost inevitable once an agricultural society gets large and sophisticated enough.

> After 9,500 years of a stable climate and accumulation of information, the renaissance happened, from there industrialization and the Information Age happened.

Well ... as Jared Diamond correctly points out (in "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and other publications of his), it is actually geography that creates the climate stability. Basically, the Middle-East, Indus Valley, and some parts of China are basically in climate zones where one can develop long-term agriculture sedentary societies.

You only need some kind of reasonable interstadial period between ice ages, which the Neanderthals definitely experienced (and yet failed to develop agricultural societies).

Another fantastic reference for the pre-historic peopling of the Americas is After the Ice (Harvard University Press, 2006) by Steven Mithen.

While the book focuses on the worldwide rise of human cultures after the end of the ice age, the chapters on the Americas do go into some depth on the different archeological groupings of pre-Columbian era Native Americans and examine several of the sites that have challenged the Bering Land Bridge theory due to their age and lack of relation to later cultures.

After the Ice is a great resource. Interesting narrative style as well.

The Horse, the Wheel, and Language is also a great (although fairly technical) book about the origin and spread of the Indo-European language which had a large effect on the bronze age cultures in the area.

This is well towards the end of and past the period you're asking about, but I really enjoyed After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000 - 5,000BC. It's got this interesting narrative conceit where the author conjures the spirit of a 19th century paleoanthropologist and sends him around the world to various human habitations, so the viewer sees them through his eyes and what would otherwise be a dry survey of archeological digs becomes more like a story being told by a knowledgable person. The goal is to describe how the world changed during the last great phase of human pre-history and created the conditions necessary to propel humans into civilization. One part that sticks in my head is from very early on and its how he moves from a group that live in seemingly idyllic conditions in the levant (IIRC) to another group suffering through a harsh Ice Age winter, huddled together and all with their backs to a fierce wind. The difference in mobility and group-size really stuck with me.

I've been reading After the Ice as of late, can recommend

I'm reading this currently and loving it: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/0674019997/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Maybe they should read Into The Wild or read about hunter gathers back 20,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age and realize how much effort there is to truly living off the land.
Have a read of this book for a bit more info

http://www.amazon.com/After-Ice-Global-History-000-5000/dp/0674019997/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211761944&sr=8-1

Why 37,000 years ago? That sounds like a rather specific age and suggests that you have a more specific question in mind. For example, are you interested in Homo sapiens/Neanderthal interactions? At that distant age, archaeologists find sites that give us snippets of behavior, rather than definitive knowledge of what everyday life was like, so your question would be hard to answer. I can say with some certainty though, that life would have been very different in different parts of the world during that time period. Modern humans were living throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, and Australia at that point, and each continent would require different adaptations.

My own research interests don't usually extend that far back in time, so I can't think of a good readable book detailing sites from 37,000 years ago. The best one I can recommend is After the Ice, which discusses how human life changes during the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene around the world.

Yes, I still spell "Neanderthal" with the "th." I'm stubborn like that. Just because the German spelling changes doesn't mean the English usage needs to follow suit, in my opinion.

So you're looking for hundreds of pages of open-ended history? Sounds like a tall order for an NSQ question. :-)

You might enjoy this book.

The Horse, the Wheel and Language is a really excellent book about the origins of the Indo-european peoples. Did you ever wonder why so many of our ancient gods were sky and/or thunder gods? Why Iranian, English and Norse are all one big language family?

I also love After the Ice. That's another approachable archaeology/prehistory book. The author does an amazing job of imagining what life was like as the great sheets of ice retreated and humans began to settle in villages. Just imagine the changes in how people saw their world as they gave up tens of thousands of years of wandering to settle in one place and learn how to coax a living out of the land.