What were people like in prehistoric times? British archaeologist and paleolinguist Colin Renfrew has some ideas. Renfrew’s book “Prehistory: The Making of the Human Mind” is a discussion of findings from what’s referred to as “cognitive archaeology,” a theoretical model that tries to describe the thinking of ancient peoples by studying archaeological finds.
The book reads well and is useful and interesting for me, as my Edhai fiction project focuses on the remote past. I particularly appreciated Renfrew’s discussions of economics and trade in prehistoric times. As one might expect, Renfrew subscribes to a view of the past conventional in mainstream academia, filtered through darwinism and an inflated chronology of history and prehistory. Outside of those common assumptions, I find this book commendably free of speculation.
These comments are based on my review of “Prehistory: The Making of the Human Mind” at Goodreads, where you can see what I’m reading, along with my other reviews.
ARK — 13 August 2014
A. Roy King 