Cro-Magnon

How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans

By: Brian Fagan

Narrated by: James Langton

Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

Best-selling author Brian Fagan brings early humans out of the deep freeze with his trademark mix of erudition, cutting-edge science, and vivid storytelling.

Cro-Magnon reveals human society in its infancy, facing enormous environmental challenges - including a rival species of humans, the Neanderthals. For ten millennia, Cro-Magnons lived side by side with Neanderthals, an encounter that Fagan fills with drama. Using their superior intellects and tools, these ingenious problem solvers survived harsh conditions that eventually extinguished their Neanderthal cousins.

Cro-Magnon captures the indomitable adaptability that has made Homo sapiens an unmatched success as a species. Living on a frozen continent with only the most basic tools, Ice Age humans survived and thrived.

©2010 Brian Fagan (P)2010 Tantor

Excellent overview of our deep past.

This excellent book goes into the depths of human history and traces the early origins of the first modern humans, the Cro-Magnons, from their competition with our closest (now extinct) ancestors, the Neanderthals, and their development through the upper Paleolithic into the dawn of agriculture in the Neolithic period.
With a primary focus on the European Upper Paleolithic, the author covers the various material-cultural groups that archaeologists have identified based on their physical remains, art, artifacts, and genetic data. The main cultures the book primarily focuses on: (their original names in their own languages are lost to time) are now labelled by paleontologists and archaeologists as the Aurignacian, Gravettian Solutrean, and Magdalenian cultures. The author explores what is known about these cultures, how they lived, the tools and weapons which were essential to their daily life, their hunting practices and relationship to the natural world, and the art they left behind, giving us a small window into how they may have thought about the harsh yet awe inspiring world they lived in at the dawn of the human experience.
Written in 2011, some information is likely out of date. (We now know conclusively for example that humans and Neanderthals interbred, a question which was still unresolve at the time this book was written, it is now also known that Neanderthal was fully capable of language, which was not yet definitively proven at the time of writing.) However, the author provides the best information that was available at the time of writing.
The narration by James Langton is top-tier, and kept me engaged throughout.
5/5.

Amazing Look at Lives of "Cave Men"

I can truly picture and wonder at the "cave-man's" cleverness, now I understand cave paintings FAR beyond the simple explanation by a professor of "sympathetic magic" with some solid theories on their meaning and purpose.

The author is also frank on the many things, besides art, we will never learn.

You'll understand as the archaeologist/writer assumes no prior knowledge.

Described are: how they hunted, tools, interactions with peers (while Neanderthals watched silently). You have permission to use the "TH" as in "think" to say "Neanderthal" despite being corrected to "NeanderTal" by the snobby as real archaeologists use the former normally.

Also, while we've heard of asteroids causing apocalypses, it was astonishing to learn vast extinctions were also caused by HUGE volcanic eruptions (The relatively recent Krakatoa volcano was a firecracker in comparison.) leading to "nuclear winter" type weather for years leading to massive extinctions.

It will answer competing theories on the Cro-Magnon origins.

You'll learn, without boredom, about the lives & progress and unique devices created by these amazing beings.

The book covers several ice age & warming trends over epochs of time. (Mild political note to any who might use that climate change info. to bolster claims that "Warming periods are common and so normal!", to which the reply would be yes, they are....over THOUSANDS of years, NOT over a single century.)

The production is terrific with regard to narration and editing.

This is a must-read as well-written non fiction gets the 5 * distinction. Lifetime learning is fun!

Just Okay

I am very interested in this topic but much of this book was dry and boring. I wish there were some visualizations or PDFs, especially when discussing the cave paintings. As for the narrator, he definitely did not help make this title anymore interesting but he wasn't bad. Had I not been so interested in the topic itself then I would have stopped listening to this title and would have just watched a documentary on the same topic via TV.

Nice visuals

This was a good visual book. A bit long and drawn out but generally pretty informative. I like the archeological findings parts the best.

Not the greatest, but held my attention

A neat portrayal of the early days of humans and what our day to day lives could have been like. I learned a lot about early humans, Neanderthals, and some of the related subspecies. The comparisons between Cro Magnons and Neanderthals were particularly interesting to me. I'm really into this topic, so I devour whatever I can get. A better book I read on the same general topic recently was Last Ape Standing by Chip Walter, but unfortunately no audio version of that book is available yet. Some reviewers have griped about the amount of speculation that is nessesary for Cro Magnon to have the feel of a collection of short stories. I enjoyed the format myself, and understand that the speculation is based in science. Speculation allows for a better mental image of what things must have been like back then. The narration was decent. I've heard worse, I've heard better.

If you're a junky for this kind of stuff like I am, you'll find this book to be worthwhile, albeit not amazing. If you're just a little curious about the subject, but haven't read much on it, I would say that you might enjoy some others more.

Fact and fiction

An interesting introduction to our current state of knowledge of our distant ancestors. However, don't expect only a discussion of facts drawn from recent archaeological studies. The author adds colour to the text by speculating well beyond what we know in the areas of social structure and human/neanderthal coexistence. Sometimes this is enjoyable, sometimes it taxes credulity.

Hmmmm!

A better title would have been more descriptive of the book and the author's premise. Perhaps it should be titled Neaderthal Man since that is what the book is essentially about.

Interesting pre-history, well-delivered

It's been over a decade since I last paid much attention to the story of the Neanderthal / Cro-Magnon era of pre-history. Brian Fagan's book filled in the gaps in my knowledge and delivered an excellent history.

Although the book is entitled "Cro-Magnon," the first part (almost the first half, really) tells the story of the Neanderthals and what we know about the fate of the Neanderthals when anatomically modern humans arrived. This is a very interesting puzzle and it is framed well and told effectively. The second part of the book goes into modern humans' struggle through Ice Ages, super-volcanic eruptions and more.

Yes, the subject (paleo-anthropology) is somewhat on the dry side, but the author livens it up pretty well.

James Langton's reading is quite good, except for one point that irritated the heck out of me: I've always heard that the proper pronunciation of Neanderthal is "Neandertal," but Langton pronounced the "th" like in "theta."

Skipping to Part II

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought Part I was too speculative and almost comically repetitive. I'm skipping to Part II now, and thank the reviewer who suggested that. I'll update my review after I'm done.

But my gosh, hearing the reader go on about the "intricate dance of two cultures" and the "silent Neanderthal man staring at his more intelligent neighbor," over and over and over again reminded me of my time as an English major when I'd spin big papers out of a few facts/ideas that really deserved about 15 percent of the space they actually got.

disappointed

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

I am a fan of Brian Fagan and have enjoyed his work in the past, But, I am not a fan of