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Lost Worlds: How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, and Built Our World – A History of Civilization Through Trial and Error, Ice Age to Bronze Age
Not yet published
Expected 5 May 26The creator of the hit podcast Tides of History offers a new look at humanity’s deep past, showing us how our world was built not by inevitability, but by trial and error on a global 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.
But instead of being an arc of progress, this period of immense change was not linear; it was littered with fits and false starts, failures, disasters, and the complete collapse of complex societies. With the recent explosion in available archaeological evidence, including ancient human DNA, we can now understand long-past people in unprecedented detail. By focusing on lost worlds of individuals and societies, we see that to be human is to try and fail. But it is also to endure.
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.
Sweeping, accessible, and filled with colorful detail, Lost Worlds is the story of how humanity built the world we live in—not by destiny, but by experiment.
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.
But instead of being an arc of progress, this period of immense change was not linear; it was littered with fits and false starts, failures, disasters, and the complete collapse of complex societies. With the recent explosion in available archaeological evidence, including ancient human DNA, we can now understand long-past people in unprecedented detail. By focusing on lost worlds of individuals and societies, we see that to be human is to try and fail. But it is also to endure.
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.
Sweeping, accessible, and filled with colorful detail, Lost Worlds is the story of how humanity built the world we live in—not by destiny, but by experiment.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
464 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication May 5, 2026
223 people want to read
About the author
Patrick Wyman
4 books172 followersDr. Patrick Wyman is the creator of the hit podcast series "Tides of History" and "Fall of Rome" which explore the four explosive decades between 1490 and 1530, bringing to life the dramatic and deeply human story of how the West was reborn.
Patrick Wyman holds a PhD in history from the University of Southern California. He previously worked as a sports journalist, covering mixed martial arts and boxing from 2013 to 2018. His work has been featured in Deadspin, The Washington Post, Bleacher Report, and others.
Patrick Wyman holds a PhD in history from the University of Southern California. He previously worked as a sports journalist, covering mixed martial arts and boxing from 2013 to 2018. His work has been featured in Deadspin, The Washington Post, Bleacher Report, and others.
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Review of advance copy received from Publisher
This book is great. Wyman manages to move both quickly and patiently through a vast swath of time, focusing on a period before many histories even begin. His research and artful storytelling doesn’t shy away from the darker side of events, but the tales he tells us about the deep past reveal something almost magical about our shared humanity.
Displaying 1 of 1 review