Cro-Magnon: How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans

Though Fagan is not my very favorite writer, I like the subject matter very much and he brings a lot to the table. I am reading 4 of his books at the same time: Fishing, The Little Ice Age and The Long Summer as well as this book. They have complimented each other. Highly recommended. 4 stars because of repetitive favorite phrases. Highly recommended if you like this subject matter.

This book provided me an opportunity to wonder about the origin of the human condition, embedded for approximately 37,000 years in Ice Age Europe. Brian Fagan’s writing is clear and easy to follow, and the author’s authority, as a long time Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, shines through. The best thing about this book is the author’s effort to stick to the anthropological and archeological data, while also allowing himself to imagine into historical conditions. Therefore, the writing combines science with thoughtful, modulated speculation. The title term, Cro-Magnon, is a generic term that Brian Fagan uses to refer to Homo sapiens, the anatomically modern humans who migrated out of Africa and began to leave artifacts in Europe after 50,000 years ago. Before our species arrived in Europe, there had been a previous migration of different species of human beings out of Africa. These earliest, non-Homo sapien humans, culminated in the Neanderthals, so that when our species first entered Europe, the continent was already inhabited by other kinds of human beings. Brian Fagan leads us on a journey that follows both the artifacts left by early human beings in Europe, and also follows his reasonable suppositions and deeply tutored imaginings about what life was like for both the Neanderthals and the Homo sapiens, as they occupied similar spaces, hunted similar animals, and endured under similar conditions. However, the Neanderthals disappeared, while our species has spread to seven billion people covering every continent. Fagan tries to find in the earliest traces left by these two groups an explanation for their startlingly different pathways, extinction vs. proliferation. Fagan focuses our attention on the idea that Neanderthals were smart, tough and resilient, but neither verbal nor innovative. Their culture was stagnant for hundreds of thousands of years. Our direct ancestors, Homo sapiens, were not as strong, but possessed speech that enabled education and the transmission of culture across space and time. Homo sapiens were also innovative, and even the rare artifacts that they left in caves and in hunting sites tell us that over time their tools changed and they expressed themselves with artistic forms, most famously the cave paintings of Lascaux, Chauvet, Altamira and elsewhere. Language, culture, constantly expanding social and trading networks, symbolic expression, and innovative response to challenge: these are the hallmarks that Brian Fagan finds in the thin residue of archeological remains from early Homo sapiens. This book also emphasizes the important relationship of our human mind to our animal kin. For almost the entire length of the existence of our species, the main thing that we Homo sapiens have done to survive was to constantly watch and study the animals around us. During the Ice Age, animals were our main source of food and clothing. The only way to kill animals was to approach them closely. The bow and arrow was not invented until late in the Ice Age, and for the previous tens of thousands of years, human hunters spent their entire life making close approaches to animals like mammoths, herds of reindeer, herds of wild horses, and many other prey. Only with a thorough knowledge of the prey species’ behavior and reactions could a human hunter survive. Fagan traces Ice Age human beings through cycles of climate change, cultural changes, and variation in animal prey, providing the reader with a sense of dynamism and change even among the earliest people. This book helped me understand the compelling fascination that wild animals exert upon all of us still, whenever we encounter a deer in Massachusetts, a moose in Maine, or a bear in Virginia. The 2010 paperback edition that I have also includes an updated Preface that reminds us that although Neanderthals and Homo sapiens were different species, recent DNA studies show us that some interbreeding occurred. The scientific knowledge and the wise tone of voice with which Brian Fagan writes, will make you feel proud to be partly Neanderthal, delighted to be a Homo sapien, and intrigued by the wonder of how fur clad predators hunted with spears for tens of centuries in Ice Age Europe, and emerged as car driving, book reading people like us. Paul R. Fleischman is the author of Wonder: When and Why the World Appears Radiant.

Brian Fagan begins his investigation of Ice Age peoples with the Neanderthals, whom he says were extant in Europe for 200,000 years before the Cro-Magnons pushed them out.Most of Fagan's book discusses various took kits. There just isn't much else left, other than cave art and reindeer bones. The Neanderthals never advance beyond their long spears. They never developed a spear thrower and had to sneak up on their prey, going so far as to jump on the backs of the larger animals to spear them in conjunction with a fellow hunter. Fagan also maintains the Neanderthals were much more adept than the cartoonists portray them. He's also positive the Cro-Magnons and their cousins did not mate (although recent scientific evidence seems to indicate they did).By 70,000 years ago the Neanderthals were gone. Fagan doesn't know whether the Cro-Magnons exterminated them or they simply couldn't compete. He's pretty sure it wasn't the Ice Age that did it, since they'd dealt with it successfully before.Fagan points to four different eras of Cro-Magnon development based on their tool kits: the Aurignacians, The Gravettians, The Solutreans, and the Magdalenians. According to Fagan, they were all really "thin on the ground," and their era came to an end (if it ever really did) when the ice receded, population increased, and people took up farming. The difference between the four cultures seems to be increasingly smaller spear heads and the use of bone and reindeer horns as projectiles. He's also almost certain the Magdalenians had the bow and arrow. Fagan talks extensively about the Cro-Magnon Swiss Army knife, a core rock that stone knappers carried to chip off various weapons and tools. They could replace a broken spear tip in seconds. He also discusses hunting strategies. The Cro-Magnons tried to mire their prey in the mud or catch them crossing a stream, or if it was horses they were hunting, drive them into box canyons and slaughter them there. They also acquired much of the food they needed for the long Ice Age winters during salmon runs which they were adept at spearing.Perhaps the most interesting part of the book for me, was the discovery of a 26,000-year-old grave containing a man and two young men buried head-to-head. The Sungir people were discovered in Northern Russia. They wore necklaces, brooches and bracelets with over 13,000 mammoth ivory beads on strings. The older man wore a beaded cap and what looked to be a richly decorated tunic. Tests indicate that each bead would have required at least an hour to make, an investment of 3,000 man hours in the older man's jewelry. As I said earlier the Cro-Magnons were "thin on the ground," which meant they traveled as small bands, but these "riches" seem to imply a hierarchal society, only 20,000 years after our ancestors left Africa.

I always sit up and take notice when a non-fiction book is enjoyable and a pleasure to read; having to read through so many of them as part of what I do, finding those rare few that are enjoyable reads into the bargain are something of a treat. I expected Brian Fagan's work to be authoritative - his name has been mentioned many times in the academic circles I move in as an established, solid professional - but the delight of the read was something unexpected; a real bonus. Cro-Magnon is a smooth, easy read, with fluid prose and clearly presented concepts and information.Cro-Magnon is pretty solid and accurate in terms of its factual grounding, though new discoveries have been made since its publication, which Fagan does take the time to discuss in his prelude to the paperback edition - that said, the book itself is not that old, having been published in 2010, so much of it is still relevant. However, on the down side, occasionally Fagan carries on the style of writing he uses for his story-telling interludes and begins stating certain matters as fact in the information-delivering sections of the book, when in fact they're very much up for discussion - a key example of this is the question that revolves around whether or not Neanderthals were capable of speech and language. Fagan only touches briefly on the alternative views surrounding this issue, but then appears to whole-heartedly lump for the notion that the Neanderthals existed largely without speech, relying on a limited range of sounds and otherwise physical gestures - the "quiet people" he describes in his story-telling. Fagan's interpretation is a possibility, but in the face of evidence that Neanderthals were certainly physically capable of speech it's not the interpretation I would go with, and it would have been preferrable if there had been more discussion around the controversies.That said, Fagan does take the time, through handy boxes scattered throughout the text, to explain some of the technical and scientific background behind the archaeology and expain why this places some of the archaeology in question - a very handy device for any non-archaeologists out there. However, I did disagree with yet a couple more of Fagan's interpretations. Cro-Magnon appears to assume a rough date for the "Out of Africa" migration of Homo sapiens at around c. 55,000 BCE. This seems strange to me as the artefacts on the ground clearly tell a different tale - for example, artefacts demonstrating continued occupation at sites in India both before and after the Toba eruption between 67,000 and 75,000 BCE - and having read geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer's Out of Eden the DNA evidence is fairly convincing for an Out of Africa event c. 85,000 BCE. Fagan also appears to suggest that Homo sapiens left Africa in anatomically modern form but later underwent some form of mental revolution - resulting in the explosion of culture and art that one finds in Cro-Magnon societies in Europe c. 40,000 BCE... but the "mental revolution" theory is disputed, and close examination of the evidence rather suggests to me that the Homo sapiens that migrated out of Africa did so with all the mental faculties and agility that we possess today. But essentially what all that boils down to is that I would advice fellow readers to beware not to take Fagan at his word and support their reading with other works on the subject.

Brian Fagan is consistently entertaining and informative even though for some of his conclusions/speculations there is little hard evidence. I am reading his book on my Kindle currently but have now ordered a print copy. My reason is that the many diagrams in Fagan's text are too small on the Kindle to be of much use or even readable without a magnifier. Also the author often references diagrams/illustrations located some pages away - back or forward - which can be irritating on the Kindle.For speed of reading the text, I would still opt for the Kindle version saving some £19 on the print copy but for serious study the print copy would be essential. As the Kindle version is under £2, buying both is a viable alternative.As other reviewers have indicated, however, for serious study it is essential to read around the subject in some of the many recent texts available so as to be able to separate the speculations from the hard facts or reliable theories. One could do worse, indeed, than read the other reviews of this book on Amazon as a starting point for that study.

I really enjoyed this book which combines an interesting and engaging writing style with up to date information on the subject. Long lost generations come to life and you can begin to appreciate the massive struggle for survival that our ancestors fought and won.

Some archaeologist have favorite theories about the past that have only a passing relation to the facts. This book is I’m afraid an example of one of them, more pet theory than an exploration of facts or even informed speculation. Here’s a suggested experiment for waxing “theoretical” archaeologist. Take a known hunter gatherer culture; remove everything that won’t survive for 40,000 years. Now reconstruct the culture or get a colleague to reconstruct it, the people, their attitudes, beliefs and so on as Mr. Fagan does with the Neanderthals and Cro-magnon - Publish the results. They will likely be no closer to reality than this unfortunate misguided bag of speculation is.

Brian Fagan is a prolific and fluent author on archaeology and ancient climate and I always enjoy his books. So is this one - which might be titled Neanderthals & Cro Magnons - as good as the others?Yes if you like a good read, no if you want historical truth.Modern man and Neanderthals coexisted in Europe for some 15,000 years. Yet the laws of nature state that only one species can occupy an ecological niche at a time. How come two managed for so long?The answer is we just don't know. For evidence we have about 500 partial skeletons and a lot of flints. This is just too little to bear the weight of speculation about Neanderthals. Elsewhere, a whole book has been written about Neanderthal language (they sang but did not talk, apparently). What is the actual physical evidence for this? One single hyoid bone.Did the two groups interbreed? Who knows? Perhaps they did but if the hybrid offspring had even a slightly lower fertility than "pure breds" then the Neanderthal DNA would be obliterated in time. Perhaps interbreeding went with warfare: rape and warfare go together like bacon and eggs. Did they cooperate? Possibly. Since man is a wolf to man the presence of a out-group as a buffer between neighbouring tribes might be considered an advantage. Did they fight? Fagan writes of "occasional fisticuffs" but this seems to me far too kind. They were living in a rough and changeable environment, where unpredictable cycles of feast and famine might occasionally lead to sudden and temporary declines in infant mortality... and later a surfeit of young males, which is the usual recipe for conflict. Neanderthals appear to have reached maturity slightly earlier than modern humans so the demographics may have favoured them in wars. Did they trade? Possibly, but the Neanderhals appear to have learnt nothing from it, while the Cro Magnons were far more innovative and traded over far greater distances. In the end the Neanderthals had nothing to offer.The Neanderthals died out about 30,000 years ago. Could this be because of climate change? Hardly, they'd survived much worse before. So it must be the fault of our ancestors, then. Should we feel guilty? No. For all the intriguing mysteries they were a pretty boring bunch, with no progress to show for 100,000 years in Europe. Like the Bourbons, they learnt nothing and forgot nothing. For all Fagan's occasional novelettish descriptions, I don't miss them. There are examples of genocides much nearer our times (ask a Carib or a Tasman, if you can find one) so Fagan's notion that the Neanderthals died out from being gently urged into ever more marginal habitat is not exculpatory.The Cro Magnons (our ancestors) are a much more interesting case. But here again we are faced with a limited archaeological record. Nearly no organic matter has survived, and this must have weighed most of their worldly goods. Did they have language? Undoubtedly. But grammar, a notion of symbolic action, a rudimentary calendar, religion, hierarchy, division of labour? The debate can rage because even the magnificent cave art which has come down to us comes by accident of avalanches blocking the cave mouths and we will never know what has been lost.Fagan does his best, but the dearth of evidence is an unacknowledged handicap to this book. Why should I believe a word of it? Because he's a distinguished professor, and I'm not. So what?