Full name: First Peoples in a New World: Colonizing Ice Age America

Author: David J. Meltzer Year: 2009 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: History, Non Fiction, Anthology, Science Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780520250529 9780520267992 0520250524 0520267990

More than 12,000 years ago, in one of the greatest triumphs of prehistory, humans colonized North America, a continent that was then truly a new world. Just when and how they did so has been one of the most perplexing and controversial questions in archaeology. This dazzling, cutting-edge synthesis, written for a wide audience by an archaeologist who has long been at the center of these debates, tells the scientific story of the first Americans: where they came from, when they arrived, and how they met the challenges of moving across the vast, unknown landscapes of Ice Age North America. David J. Meltzer pulls together the latest ideas from archaeology, geology, linguistics, skeletal biology, genetics, and other fields to trace the breakthroughs that have revolutionized our understanding in recent years. Among many other topics, he explores disputes over the hemisphere's oldest and most controversial sites and considers how the first Americans coped with changing global climates. He also confronts some radical claims: that the Americas were colonized from Europe or that a crashing comet obliterated the Pleistocene megafauna. Full of entertaining descriptions of on-site encounters, personalities, and controversies, this is a compelling behind-the-scenes account of how science is illuminating our past. Similar books: The Man in the Ice by Konrad Spindler The First Americans by James Adovasio Ancient North America by Brian Fagan The Goddess and the Bull by Michael Balter Written in Bones by Paul Bahn Fairweather Eden by Michael W. Pitts Gods, Graves & Scholars by C. W. Ceram The Great Journey by Brian Fagan Before Civilization by Colin Renfrew Underworld by Graham Hancock Prehistory by Colin Renfrew After the Ice by Steven Mithen In Small Things Forgotten by James Deetz The Civilization of the Goddess by Marija Gimbutas Lives in Ruins by Marilyn Johnson Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade The Power of Babel by John McWhorter Breaking the Maya Code by Michael Coe Cannibals and Kings by Marvin Harris Masters of the Planet by Ian Tattersall