Why did Brett love this book?
How was Europe populated? And from where? And what were the mechanisms for and the means of this population?
Jean Manco describes the archeology and history of the populating of Europe from the Upper Paleolithic to the violent movements of the Vikings at the end of the first millennium AD. She writes a detective story in which archaeology, culture, language, history, and the physical environment are framed relative to the study of DNA in populations.
Even though her history ends with the Vikings, the story she tells implicates us within the broader matrix of human history. The book is an adventure in thought and analysis.
1 author picked Ancestral Journeys as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Who are the Europeans? Where did they come from? In recent years scientific advances have yielded a mass of new data, turning cherished ideas upside down. The idea of migration in prehistory, so long out of favour, is back on the agenda. Visions of continuity now have to give way to a more dynamic view of Europe's past, with one wave of migration followed by another, from the first human arrivals to the Vikings. This pioneering book brings together for the first time the latest genetic evidence and combines it with archaeology and linguistics to produce a new history of…