For the deep history/archaeology diver, there's nothing like experiencing the landscape to focus the mind's eye. e 1-star, the author's atheist/ anti-church droning and never missing an opportunity to inject wokeness. They ended up recreating prehistoric societies which mirrored their own, largely down to circular arguments. Professor Alice Roberts is an academic, author and broadcaster, specialising in human anatomy, physiology, evolution, archaeology and history. Indeed the grave itself contained nearly a hundred items – including copper knives, gold objects, boars’ tusks and a shale ring – making it the most richly furnished grave from the period that had ever been discovered in Britain.

Obvious books to read if you enjoyed this, would be Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. Perhaps it would have been much better if the sites remained in situ, undiscovered until the author appeared. But in Ancestors, anthropologist, broadcaster and academic Professor Alice Roberts explores what we can learn about the very earliest Britons, from burial sites and by using new technology to analyse ancient DNA. Together with two stone wrist guards, or bracers, they formed the largest collection of bronze age archery equipment ever found. Can you imagine an existence of years of puss seeping abscessed teeth slowly rotting through your mandible?The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. The main topic is covered in sufficient for the armchair archaeologist and is accessible without descending into a dry, academic, study. The Amesbury Archer is preserved in Salisbury Museum and, according to Roberts, “our visits to museums, to gaze on such human remains, are a form of ancestor worship”.

It explores our interconnected global ancestry, and the human experience that binds us all together. Told through seven fascinating burial sites, this groundbreaking prehistory of Britain teaches us more about ourselves and our history: how people came and went and how we came to be on this island. As an aside, not in her book, I note that social gender categories often follow linguistic gender categories. It explores forgotten journeys and memories of migrations long ago, written into genes and preserved in the ground for thousands of years. Perhaps the important divide for the Beaker people was into animate/singular and neuter/collective, rather than owned wealth or male/female?

We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. In the 20th Century, society was largely defined by a division into male and female, and property ownership was the key to social class. The real picture is that perhaps up to 1 out 4 in the Central Europe population reflect war-like bone trauma over the 1000-year era, and it's unseen in earlier and later populations.