Lost worlds : how humans tried, failed, succeeded, and built our world / Patrick Wyman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wyman, Patrick, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Civilization, Ancient.

Neolithic period.

Bronze age.

Human beings--History.

Human beings.

Prehistoric peoples.

neolithic.

Genre:

Informational works.

Physical Description:

x, 446 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2026]

Summary:

"A new look at humanity's deep past to show us how our world was built not by inevitability, but by trial and error on a planetary scale. There's a familiar story about us humans: we went from hunting and gathering to farming, wandering bands to villages and cities, clans and chieftains to states and kings. But Lost Worlds offers a new narrative of humanity's deep history. Here beloved podcast host Patrick Wyman focuses on the 10,000-year span between the end of the Ice Age and the decline of the Bronze Age--the period when civilization as we understand it emerged, introducing social hierarchies, urbanism, complex political organizations, and the written word. In this nuanced retelling, human progress is no longer a straight march from caves to cities: Farming didn't always replace foraging, villages didn't automatically spark agriculture, and cities didn't necessitate rigid hierarchies. For thousands of years, humans merely improvised. By the end of the Bronze Age, the world had become unrecognizable: mammoths and giant sloths replaced by cattle and sheep, scattered nomadic bands replaced by millions living in cities, and farming on nearly every continent. Wyman argues that the rise of states and steady food production wasn't inevitable, but rather, the outcome of countless choices that reshaped the planet and made us who we are today."-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Part 1: Unstable planet. The world as it was ; The dawn of the Holocene ; The Fertile Crescent and the birth of agriculture ; The many cradles of agriculture ; The end of the beginning

Part 2: The long Neolithic. Global Neolithics ; Massacres, mass graves, and the dark side of the Neolithic ; The heights of the late Neolithic

Part 3: Civilization and its discontents. Two murders at the dawn of history ; The first "civilizations" ; Language and migration from the Steppe to the Pacific ; Why the Great Pyramid and Stonehenge were only built once

Part 4: Fall and rise, rise and fall. A spate of falling civilizations ; Peaceful lives in the late Bronze Age ; War ; The Bronze Age collapse

Epilogue.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 387-427) and index.

Other Format:

Online version Wyman, Patrick Lost worlds

ISBN:

9780063256484

0063256487

OCLC:

1583092510