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

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."

Interesting but speculative and repetitive

For the most part I enjoyed listening to this book. I was unfamiliar with the topic and thought I would give it a listen, and I feel I've learnt a fair amount about mans pre-history. However, I found great chunks of the book to be highly speculative with long story-like fantasies from the author about how he thinks daily life of the cro-magnon may have been. In other words, I think the book sacrifices some objective integrity in order to make it more easily accessible/readable.. (a mistake in my mind).

A Summary of the Evidence

I look for books that address topics about which I have little understanding. Hence, I picked up Brian Fagan's "Cro-Magnon" which presents the current knowledge concerning our stone-age ancestors. He accomplishes this by clearly telling the reader what is known, what is still unknown, and how inferences from the archeological record are drawn. Along the way he brings the reader up-to-date on carbon dating, DNA analysis and other technological tools used in the study of that record. He speculates about the lives of various of these individuals and describes their behavior in hunting, family matters, inter-group trade, language and other things. True, the narrative portions of some sections are based upon conjecture, but they are rooted in “what is known” and the descriptions help the novice visualize what life may have been like for these individuals. The reading of James Langtgon is very good.

Good information in a slightly cheesy way.

the use of dramatization of the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon was interesting but at times it becomes kitchy in a post modern "early humans were all friends" kind of way. However teh information was excellent and well presented.

interesting but repetitive

I like to imagine what life was like for early humans. This book does allow the reader to do so while taking considerable care to back the imagery with agreed upon facts. It becomes a bit tedious with all measures cited in metric and non-metric units and vast spans of time described from multiple anchor points ie from the present, BC, from the last glacial maxima etc.

Those fascinating chroma one

Narration: clear. Deeper voice more suitable for subject matter. Comfortably paced.

Content: informative but could be better organized and shortened. A lot of redundancy.

Brought history to life.

Somewhat poetic license but quite plausible stories to explain evolutionary changes in our ancient ancestors.