Overview

During the Last Ice Age, Europe was a cold, dry place teeming with mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, reindeer, bison, cave bears, cave hyenas, and cave lions. It was also the home of people physically indistinguishable from humans today, commonly known as the Cro-Magnons. Our knowledge of them comes from either their skeletons or the tools, art, and debris they left behind. This book tells the story of these dynamic and resilient people in light of recent scientific advances. Trenton Holliday-a paleoanthropologist who has studied the Cro-Magnons for decades-explores questions such as: Where and when did anatomically modern humans first emerge? When did they reach Europe, and via what routes? How extensive or frequent were their interactions with Neandertals? What did Cro-Magnons look like? What did they eat, and how did they acquire their food? What can we learn about their lives from studying their skeletons? How did they deal with the glacial cold? What does their art tell us about them? Holliday offers new insights into these ancient people from anthropological, archaeological, genetic, and geological perspectives. He also considers how the Cro-Magnons responded to Earth's post-glacial warming almost 12,000 years ago, showing that how they dealt with climate change holds valuable lessons for us as we negotiate life on a rapidly warming planet.

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Trenton Holliday is unquestionably one of the foremost experts on this subject. -- John Shea, Stony Brook University, and author of <i>The Unstoppable Human Species</i>

Trenton Holliday is unquestionably one of the foremost experts on this subject. -- John Shea, Stony Brook University, and author of <i>The Unstoppable Human Species</i> Most every school child has heard of the Cro-Magnon, but few people actually know anything about them. This engaging and accessible book by Trenton Holliday may go a long way towards remedying that situation! Written by one of the foremost experts on the Ice Age peoples of the world, Cro-Magnon brings to life – in clear, nontechnical English – what we know about these ancient Europeans, their fascinating history of study, and the very latest research on them. -- Steven Churchill, Duke University In Cro-Magnon, Trent Holliday gifts us a vivid, impressively detailed portrait of the earliest modern Europeans. He deftly weaves studies of biological characteristics, behavioral indicators, environment, history, and colorful descriptions of places and people into a fascinating narrative that brings alive these humans of the distant past. Holliday’s book is thorough, yet eminently readable, and is certainly required reading for anyone interested in the later phases of human evolution. -- Fred H. Smith, University Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Biological Sciences, Illinois State University

Author Information

Trenton Holliday is professor of anthropology at Tulane University and honorary research fellow at the Centre for the Exploration of the Deep Human Journey, University of the Witwatersrand.

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