Ancestors: A History of Britain in Thirteen Burials | 
pickA fascinating listen about our ancient ancestors and what their burial sites can tell us about how they lived etc. I‘ve been listening to it since August (takes me so long to get through audiobooks 😬) but it was so interesting I always knew where I‘d left off even if I hadn‘t listened for a while. Very well written and narrated.
I‘m really in the mood for some non-fiction history fix this evening #AliceRoberts
My #bookspinbingo list for January - a mix of library books, five books I‘ve chosen for the 52 Book Club Challenge that I plan to read this month, and a selection of backlist e-books. @TheAromaofBooks
It was absolutely grotty weather here today - rain, wind, and even hail 😕 so the New Year‘s Day walk was postponed and I spent a very enjoyable day sewing and listening to the tagged audiobook which I‘m finding fascinating!
By about 30,000 years ago, humans and pretty much everything else - apart from the most committed Arctic species, like musk ox, hare and lemming
were well on their way to disappearing from the British landscape. And it would be a chilly 15,000 years before anyone came back
pickFascinating & so readable as you‘d expect from Professor of Public Engagement with Science. Each burial site is examined for the history of its excavation and what it tells us in terms of our ancestors. What I loved was the authors strong focus on understanding our cultural bias, encouraging us to embrace ambiguity & ensure we‘re aware of the subjectivity we view the past, our potential bias & the need to maintain diverse perspective on the past.
All the weekend jobs are done - so this is where you‘ll find me for the next few hours ☺️
Bookmark chosen - I can now begin!
pickHm, interesting that my copy says seven burials, and yet the subtitle here says thirteen. Either way, it's a lot more than that, because Roberts discusses all kinds of non-British burials too. I was hoping for closer focus on specific burials, to be honest, rather than a zoomed-out overview of What Britain Was Like -- but this was interesting too.
“The prehistory of Britain in seven burials“ is a very inaccurate tagline for this book. It's much more “the prehistory of Britain, with lots and lots of detail from places that definitely aren't Britain, where each chapter briefly touches on and begins with a burial that is actually in Britain but which the author doesn't actually know or care a whole lot about“. The chapter that opens with Pontnewydd Cave for example is much more about Shanidar.
