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Origins
- How the Earth Made Us
- Narrated by: John Sackville
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: History, World
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Maybe it was a viral pandemic or an asteroid strike or perhaps nuclear war. Whatever the cause, the world as we know it has ended, and you and the other survivors must start again. What key knowledge would you need to start rebuilding civilisation from scratch? Once you’ve scavenged what you can, how do you begin producing the essentials? How do you grow food, generate power, prepare medicines, or get metal out of rocks? Could you avert another Dark Ages or take shortcuts to accelerate redevelopment?
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This is better than any textbook
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Fascinating challenge to many ideas I took as self evident
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great book
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Wit and wisdom so you learn and laugh - 6 stars
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The Knowledge
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Maybe it was a viral pandemic or an asteroid strike or perhaps nuclear war. Whatever the cause, the world as we know it has ended, and you and the other survivors must start again. What key knowledge would you need to start rebuilding civilisation from scratch? Once you’ve scavenged what you can, how do you begin producing the essentials? How do you grow food, generate power, prepare medicines, or get metal out of rocks? Could you avert another Dark Ages or take shortcuts to accelerate redevelopment?
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This is better than any textbook
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Buried
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Funerary rituals show us what people thought about mortality; how they felt about loss; what they believed came next. From Roman cremations and graveside feasts, to deviant burials with heads rearranged, from richly furnished Anglo Saxon graves to the first Christian burial grounds in Wales, Buried provides an alternative history of the first millennium in Britain.
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The Dawn of Everything
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For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike - either free and equal, or thuggish and warlike. Civilisation, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the 18th century as a reaction to Indigenous critiques of European society and why they are wrong. In doing so, they overturn our view of human history, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery and civilisation itself.
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Fascinating challenge to many ideas I took as self evident
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great book
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Wit and wisdom so you learn and laugh - 6 stars
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From that first foray to the spread of early hominids who later became Homo sapiens, life has persisted, undaunted. A (Very) Short History of Life is an enlightening story of survival, of persistence, illuminating the delicate balance within which life has always existed, and continues to exist today. It is our planet like you’ve never seen it before. Life teems through Henry Gee’s lyrical prose - colossal supercontinents drift, collide and coalesce, fashioning the face of the planet as we know it today.
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Fascinating, comprehensive, without bogging you down in detail.
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At least its true
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a fascinating journey into our past.
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Way too anti Trump. Typical academic .
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1177 B.C. (Revised and Updated)
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This audiobook narrated by acclaimed archaeologist and best-selling author Eric Cline offers a breathtaking account of how the collapse of an ancient civilized world ushered in the first Dark Ages.
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Ruined entirely by Narrator
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So so
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- Unabridged
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Random House presents the audiobook edition of Tamed, written and read by Alice Roberts. The extraordinary story of the species that became our allies. For hundreds of thousands of years, our ancestors depended on wild plants and animals for survival. They were hunter-gatherers, consummate foraging experts, taking the world as they found it. Then a revolution occurred - our ancestors' interaction with other species changed.
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Fascinating.
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- Unabridged
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Tim Marshall's global best seller Prisoners of Geography showed how every nation’s choices are limited by mountains, rivers, seas and concrete. Since then, the geography hasn’t changed. But the world has. In this revelatory new book, Marshall explores 10 regions that are set to shape global politics in a new age of great-power rivalry: Australia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Greece, Turkey, the Sahel, Ethiopia, Spain and space.
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Not about geography
- By James on 30-05-2021
Publisher's Summary
Random House presents the audiobook edition of Origins by Lewis Dartnell, read by John Sackville.
When we talk about human history, we focus on great leaders, mass migration and decisive wars. But how has the Earth itself determined our destiny? How has our planet made us?
As a species we are shaped by our environment. Geological forces drove our evolution in East Africa; mountainous terrain led to the development of democracy in Greece; and today voting behaviour in the United States follows the bed of an ancient sea. The human story is the story of these forces, from plate tectonics and climate change, to atmospheric circulation and ocean currents.
How are the Himalayas linked to the orbit of the Earth, and to the formation of the British Isles? By taking us billions of years into our planet’s past, Professor Lewis Dartnell tells us the ultimate origin story. When we reach the point where history becomes science we see a vast web of connections that underwrites our modern world and helps us face the challenges of the future.
From the cultivation of the first crops to the founding of modern states, Origins reveals the Earth’s awesome impact on the shape of human civilisations.
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What listeners say about Origins
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Kym Angrave
- 15-03-2019
Awesome book
I absolutely loved this book, i learnt so much
Fantastic research done and great Narrator
4 people found this helpful
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- Micheal Farmer
- 27-06-2019
Perspective altering, food for the curious mind.
Brilliant! This is the perfect accompaniment to the authors previous book The Knowledge. Reading this will have you seeing value in everything that surrounds you. Everything has its worth but these books are priceless! As was the case with The Knowledge, I will be eating up Origins time and again. Thanks must be given to Dr Lewis for taking the time to dig up this treasure trove of information. His “Knowledge” of “Origins” will have you seeing the world we stand on with a whole new perspective.
2 people found this helpful
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- Declan Trott
- 26-09-2020
Fun pop geology
I hadn't studied geology or geography since the middle of high school, and listening to this book made me feel the lack. It places these subjects in a grand narrative of solar radiation and plate tectonics rather than as a collection of disconnected facts.
The first few chapters dealing with prehistory are probably the best - the later ones do occasionally wander into trivia, but even the trivia is pretty good. And the narrator has the perfect curious professor voice.
1 person found this helpful
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- Denyse
- 01-09-2019
l learned a lot, which is always a positive.
Very interesting. Narrator's voice soothing, I did sometimes drift off. Like being back at uni.
1 person found this helpful
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- nina
- 12-08-2021
Brilliant listen
A wonderfully written book, loved the narrator as well. It gave an insightful and interesting look at how nature has shaped us. When the last chapter finished I was keen to hear more, feel it could have done with another chapter to summarise all of its vast points. Not sure if this is different with the physical book but some aspects really needed a diagram or picture to understand especially when referring to geology (book may have these) but I found listening to it it was hard to follow some parts about sea currents etc. however highly recommend especially if you enjoyed sapiens by Yuval Harari as it has a similar feel but delves into different aspects of a similar story.
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- Kano
- 17-03-2022
Great Works from Mr. Dartnell.
Loved the book,it left me wondering about certain believes.
Mr. Dartnell was very informative.
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- Dan
- 10-06-2021
Fantastic
The perfect story, language and wording extraordinary and a balanced, focused and very much enjoyable narration - well, all in all, one of my top five books so far. Worth all the five stars. You should not miss the chance to listen to this. In short, just get this book.
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- Adrian
- 22-01-2020
Great book; unfortunate choice of narrator
I like Dartnell’s way of looking at the world. He’s always investigating how even the most seemingly mundane aspects of everyday life can be traced back to momentous events in big history. This book looks at how geological processes have shaped human (pre-)history, with a focus on geopolitics and the distribution of natural resources.
Having read a fair bit about the subject already, I went into this book with some reservations, fully prepared to find little beyond the usual pop-sci earth science (the Toba bottleneck hypothesis, the origins of British coal and Californian oil, etc). As it turns out, the book went into greater detail and covered more unfamiliar ground than I had expected, giving me several new topics to explore further. It does feel a little unstructured at times, but not enough to make it a difficult or frustrating read.
The one thing I really found tedious was the narrator. His tone and volume are both so low, and his articulation so indistinct, that he ends up sounding like a hungover Benedict Cumberbatch with a pillow over his face. I couldn’t make out half of the words being said when trying to play it over my car stereo, Bluetooth speakers, or non-ANC headphones. Only with ANC earplugs could I hear every word being said.
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- "ben19"
- 23-04-2020
Anthropology meets geography. Fascinating.
A fascinating incite into the role the earths geography and geology has played in human development. Anthropology is a topic I really enjoy learning about and this book is probably one of my favourites on it. The author makes complex subjects easy to digest and shows the link between seemingly unrelated things very effectively by regularly referencing points made in previous chapters.
I also liked the narrators voice, which as any audiobook listener will know, is important!
Will certainly listen to this one again in the future.
3 people found this helpful
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- Keith
- 17-04-2019
Original
Quite an excellent discussion of our origins and history on the planet and how that came about due to features of the Earth itself. Where Sapiens followed our cognitive development and how that made us who we are, Origins follows how geological aspects of the planet brought us towards the major shifts in our civilization.
Perfectly read.
3 people found this helpful
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- Ramona S.
- 04-04-2019
An origin history worth reading
Having read several origin or big history books this last year I can highly recommend this. Looking more closely at geography one can relate to each chapter well.
3 people found this helpful
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- jamin305
- 15-09-2021
Disappointing and at times problematic…
For a book that promises a planetary perspective, Origins is steadfastly Eurocentric in its perspective. It eschews indigenous understandings of humanity’s relationship to the Earth and defaults to well-trodden, often out-dated narratives of human progress and Western civilisation. I was really excited by the premise but actually geological insight is thin on the ground and exciting new research is omitted despite being pertinent to the subject matter. The author presents a resolutely 20th century paradigm, using old-fashioned framings without question (for example “old world/new world”) and spending long chapters describing the advance of capitalism in hallowed terms. The result is a book that gets tangled up in its own conceit. This is less ‘How the Earth Made Us” and more “How The Earth Bestowed the Gifts of Capitalism Upon Western Civilisation.” The fact that iron and coal deposits are often found together, for example, is described as a “two for the price one” deal.
Worse still, there are a few problematic propositions scattered here and there. The authors suggestion that the North American horse species “probably” died out as a result of “over-hunting by early humans” is unscientific at best and the subsequent conclusion that “first Americans (had) unwittingly hobbled the development of civilisation across their continent” comes with an unpleasant insinuation. My least favourite sentence was the one that conjectured that Afrikaans is still spoken in South Africa “because of the roaring forties.” That prevailing winds might be even vaguely responsible for European colonialism and all its brutalities verges on apologism.
Whilst I’m sure all readers will enjoy the section which concerns the planetary forces that led to a drying in East Africa that may have accelerated the appearance of new species in the region, it was all too brief and lacked analysis. This book will not age well and there is plenty of far more exciting content on this subject that deserves your attention for more.
1 person found this helpful
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- steve hunter
- 19-05-2020
fantastic
immensely interesting and thought provoking throughout
most enjoyed book for a long time
well read as well
1 person found this helpful
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- Fan
- 22-06-2022
Awesome book
loved it from start to finish. I learned so much about the earth and human evolution.
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- Anthony Tallis
- 07-03-2022
Interesting but…
Whilst there were learnings in how humanity has been shaped by our environment the book a bit repetitive, revisiting the same points with the air of a Channel 5 documentary.
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- L. S. Douglas
- 07-02-2022
Absolute must for all inquisitive minds
A good blend of history, geography and science which is easily digestible. I wish I had this as a resource when I was at secondary school 25 years ago. Puts into perspective how small we are in the great history of our planet.
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- Mrs L.
- 04-02-2022
Fascinating
if you're interested in the history of the Earth itself, the history and development of humankind, and how the two stories interact, you should enjoy this book. How the Earth made us, and what we have done with her gifts, is entertainingly examined here.
it is well and carefully read by John Sackville although, as he is deftly spoken, it's not advisable to listen well into the evening ... although, drifting off into a doze is an excellent excuse for starting a chapter again!
As if excuse were needed...
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-07-2021
Brilliant!
I loved this book. the subject matter is utterly fascinating and the writing is accessible, light and easily absorbed. This book would make a wonderful TV documentary series
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