Settling the Earth: The Archaeology of Deep Human History

by Clive Gamble

In this worldwide survey, Clive Gamble explores the evolution of the human imagination, without which we would not have become a global species. He sets out to determine the cognitive and social basis for our imaginative capacity and traces the evidence back into deep human history. He argues that it was the imaginative ability to “go beyond” and to create societies where people lived apart yet stayed in touch that made us such effective world settlers. To make his case Gamble brings together information from a wide range of psychology, cognitive science, archaeology, palaeoanthropology, archaeogenetics, geography, quaternary science and anthropology. He presents a novel deep history that combines the archaeological evidence for fossil hominins with the selective forces of Pleistocene climate change, engages with the archaeogeneticists' models for population dispersal and displacement, and ends with the Europeans' rediscovery of the deep history settlement of the earth.

Genres: Science, Archaeology, Nonfiction, Anthropology, History, Prehistory, Evolution

405 pages, Hardcover

First published December 30, 2013

Reviews

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

It took a while to write this review, because I struggled with the rating I would give this book. This work bothered me for a number of reasons: although it is aimed at a general audience, both the language and the theoretical level are very academic. Gamble does not introduce any new material in this work, but he groups the already known data about the earliest human history into an idiosyncratic synthesis. He is especially obsessed by presenting his own conceptual frameworks (his 6 consecutive Terrae, for example, the geographical zones in which (pre) human species developed). He combines this with other theoretical elements from the social sciences, especially evolutionary psychology and social anthropology, to explain certain evolutions.

Needless to say, he thus goes far beyond the possibilities of interpretation of classical archaeology. At times you can even call this work downright speculative, and that disturbed me. And he also makes the classic mistake of first proposing a theory as an interesting explanatory hypothesis, and then turning that these into a fact. To me that’s a basic flaw.

But at the same time, after reading this book, a sense of fascination remained: it is to Gamble's credit that he at least makes an attempt to look at the industrious archaeological work from a different angle, in an effort to find better explanations. Those who hold too much to science as exclusively empirically supported knowledge will not get very far, certainly not in this domain. Theory building, and thus to some extent the use of ‘considered imagination’, is certainly necessary, provided caution is exercised. In that sense, I find Gamble's work absolutely challenging and intriguing, although I do think he has ventured a little too far. More on that in my History-account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....
(rating 2.5 stars)

[Sense of History]

Clive Gamble (° 1951) is one of the leading British archaeologists of the last decades. He owes this not to spectacular discoveries on the terrain, but to the daring theoretical approach of his abundant publications. This book illustrates that perfectly. Gamble rearranges the knowledge about early human history, as known in 2013 (of course he does not cover the most recent evolutions in paleo-genetics, but this aside) in a quite thorough way. Thus, no classic family tree of hominids and their predecessors, or a division into geological or artefact-related periods. His focus is the link between the geographical dispersal of human species and the evolution of the human mind.

Gamble needs quite a bit of preliminary explanation to get to his actual topic. This is due to the far-reaching way in which he uses numerous supporting sciences: biology (with Darwinism at the forefront, of course), geology and climatology, ecology, and psychology and anthropology. And that's because his focus is on the human mind. Especially the many theories within evolutionary psychology are discussed. For example, Gamble draws abundantly on the ‘Theory of Mind’ (the capacity for empathy and understanding of others, in various levels of intentionality). Also Robin Dunbar's social anthropological perspective, which links the evolution of the brain to the size of the group in which humans lived, is regularly referred to.

In the first chapters, Gamble clarifies concepts and distinguishes between categories across all possible aspects of human evolution. Needless to say, this is not an easy read. Gamble's obsession to categorize stands out. But then he gets to work with the archaeological material itself and the evolution of the (pre)human species. The dispersal of mankind over new territories is the basis for Gamble's chronological classification. He distinguishes 6 consecutive dispersal area’s which he calls ‘Terrae’ and gives each a number with a corresponding chronology (Terra 0 starts at 10 million years ago, Terra 5 at the period from Western colonization 1400 AD). What is particularly striking is that he attaches relatively limited importance to the transition to agricultural and sedentary societies. That is apparently one of Gamble's hobby-horses, his battle against the notion of "Neolithic Revolution", as it was marketed by Vere Gordon Childe in the 1930-50s.

It is impossible to discuss all aspects of this book here, it is really too rich in content and theory for that. Suffice to focus on Gamble’s final conclusion that it was mainly the human imagination that enabled humans to push boundaries, challenged by ever changing environments. I think that's a bit meager, because where does that imagination suddenly come from? Others too, in the past, have stressed the importance of this capability to ‘imagine’, and it is also the view with which Yuval Harari, for example, propped up his so successful Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. In the end you wonder why all that very difficult juggling with theoretical and conceptual insights was needed for.

But apparently British archeology is particularly obsessed with making intensive use of the social sciences. A colleague of Gamble's, Steven Mithen, who I happen to be reading now, likes to do that too (and I think he does a better job at that). I am bothered by the very provisional nature of all these views, often presented as facts, rather than as hypotheses. But at the same time I am fascinated by them and curious about what will be the fruit of this in the long run.
(rating 2.5 stars)

[Siri Olsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Settling the Earth explores the deep history and evolution of hominins and humans through the lens of global colonisation by dividing hominin history into five distinct phases (or terrae), each defined by the hominin geographical range during this time period. The geographical reach of hominins within each terra was determined by the existence of certain geographical, ecological or environmental boundaries, expansion beyond which was seemingly difficult or impossible to achieve, and the book is concerned with identifying and understanding the nature of these boundaries in each phase and which adaptations, both biological and behavioural, helped hominins to overcome them and move into the next phase. The idea behind the book offers a fresh, new approach to understanding hominin evolution from a sociogeographical perspective, which is an area of study that I personally find very interesting. That said, I would say that the book definitely has its strongest parts in the second half with the advent of Homo sapiens and a richer archaeological record to draw from. The author is aware of this and does much to address the issues stemming from a bias towards more recent periods, but the fact remains that the first half of the book is a lot more speculative than the latter half. The book also suffers from some structural issues. The first three or so chapters are devoted entirely to explaining different theories and hypotheses, i.e., to providing a theoretical backing and framework for the following chapters. This is a good idea in theory as it gets the heavy explaining out of the way early on so the author only has to refer back to it later, but it just makes the early chapters difficult to get through. It's simply one theoretical concept or hypothesis explained after the other before any archaeology or palaeoanthropology has been introduced and before the actual exploration of the book's topic has even gotten underway, which, even for a palaeoanthropologist like myself, who is already familiar with the stuff being covered, makes the first chapters drag painfully long. If you can get through those early chapters, though, the book is highly informative, takes a very creative approach to the study of deep human history, and presents its central ideas in an engaging manner. Especially the latter chapters detailing the more recent expansions of Homo sapiens across the globe are a delight to read, and the main ideas of the book are incredibly interesting. Take note though: This book is written for an academic audience. I imagine that a casual reader with little pre-existing knowledge of archaeology or human evolution would find it a very difficult read indeed. Therefore, I highly recommend this book, but only to people who are either archaeologists or palaeoanthropologists themselves or people with a serious, academic interest in these topics.

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Q:
Human interaction, even in the climate of texting and social messaging, remains, at heart, an emotional act between small numbers of individuals ( Chapter 2 ). What hominins have developed are ways to ramp up the emotional signal, the process of ampliication. For example, singing in a band or a choir amplii es the emotional content of such social activity. In the same way, dancing, team sports, walking clubs or laughing as the member of an audience all strengthen social ties in positive ways. The sociologist Emile Durkheim (1912/1915) stressed the importance of collective action that produced the social benei t of effervescence. In other words, people enjoy participating in a group’s activities whether a game, performance, ritual or ceremony. Such participation can be measured by psychotropic responses (Smail 2008 ), the chemical basis for that feel-good factor, and where activity results in opioid surges that reward the brain. (c)
Q:

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow, this book could not be more different than Colin Renfrew's Prehistory. Perhaps it's not fair to compare. What Gamble is doing here, is a natural history of hominins. It focuses on biology, and brains in particular. That's all well and good. It's useful in telling the long story of the paleolithic and all that came before. What it doesn't tell you, is that once you have anatomically modern humans, why do only a few of them, at very specific places and times, turn to a sedentary lifestyle, that paradoxically enables them to conquer the entire world. The biology of hunter gatherers and agriculturalists is nearly identical-- what differs is the culture.