The Last Lost World: Ice Ages, Human Origins, and the Invention of the Pleistocene
Language: English
Published by Penguin Putnam Inc, 2012
- Hardcover
- Used
Seller: World of Books Inc, Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.World of Books Inc
AbeBooks seller since March 23, 2026
Condition: Used - Good
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An enthralling scientific and cultural exploration of the Ice Age--from the author of How the Canyon Became GrandFrom a remarkable father-daughter team comes a dramatic synthesis of science and environmental history--an exploration of the geologic time scale and evolution twinned with the story of how, eventually, we have come to understand our own past. The Pleistocene is the epoch of geologic time closest to our own. The Last Lost World is an inquiry into the conditions that made it, the themes that define it, and the creature that emerged dominant from it. At the same time, it tells the story of how we came to discover and understand this crucial period in the Earth's history and what meanings it has for today.
Seller Inventory # CIN0670023639G
- Title
- The Last Lost World: Ice Ages, Human Origins, and the Invention of the Pleistocene
- Author
- Lydia V Pyne
- Publisher
- Penguin Putnam Inc
- Publication year
- 2012
- Condition
- Good
- Binding
- Hardback
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0670023639
- ISBN 13
- 9780670023639
An enlightening investigation of the Pleistocenes dual character as a geologic timeand as a cultural idea
The Pleistocene is the epoch of geologic time closest to our own. Its a time of ice ages, global migrations, and mass extinctionsof woolly rhinos, mammoths, giant ground sloths, and not least early species of Homo. Its the world that created ours.
But outside that environmental story there exists a parallel narrative that describes how our ideas about the Pleistocene have emerged. This story explains the place of the Pleistocene in shaping intellectual culture, and the role of a rapidly evolving culture in creating the idea of the Pleistocene and in establishing its dimensions. This second story addresses how the epoch, its Earth-shaping events, and its creatures, both those that survived and those that disappeared, helped kindle new sciences and a new origins story as the sciences split from the humanities as a way of looking at the past.
Ultimately, it is the story of how the dominant creature to emerge from the frost-and-fire world of the Pleistocene came to understand its place in the scheme of things. A remarkable synthesis of science and history, The Last Lost World describes the world that made our modern one.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Lydia V. Pyne is a lecturer at Drexel University. She has an MA and PhD in the history and philosophy of science, and an MA degree in anthropology.
Her father, Stephen J. Pyne, is a historian in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. He is the award-winning author of Voyager, Year of the Fires, and How the Canyon Became Grand.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
World of Books Inc
Montgomery, IL, U.S.A.
AbeBooks seller since March 23, 2026
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