The Wood Age

How one material shaped the whole of human History

By: Roland Ennos

Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris

Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

When our ancestors came down from the trees, they brought the trees with them and remade the world.

How did the descendants of small arboreal primates manage to stand on our own two feet, become top predators and take over the world?

In The Wood Age, Roland Ennos shows that the key to humanity’s success has been our relationship with wood. He takes us on a sweeping 10 million-year journey from great apes who built their nests among the trees to early humans who depended on wood for fire, shelter, tools and weapons; from the structural design of wheels and woodwinds, to the invention of paper and the printing press.

Drawing together recent research and reinterpreting existing evidence from fields as far-ranging as primatology, anthropology, archaeology, history, architecture, engineering and carpentry, Ennos charts for the first time how our ability to exploit wood’s unique properties has shaped our bodies and minds, societies and lives. He also charts the dislocating effects of industrialism and explains how rediscovering traditional ways of growing, using and understanding trees can help combat climate change and bring our lives into better balance with nature.

In the best-selling tradition of Harari’s Sapiens, this unique history of humanity tells the story of our evolution, our civilisations and our future through the lens of the material that made us. We are products of the Wood Age.

©2021 Roland Ennos (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

"A stunning book on the incalculable debt humanity owes to wood.... Roland Ennos’s knowledge of all things arboreal is vast and intricate. He is a professor of biology at the University of Hull and the author of several books, among them the Natural History Museum’s official guide to trees. But The Wood Age is something different — nothing less than a complete reinterpretation of human history and prehistory, and it is written with enormous verve and pinpoint clarity.... No review can match the richness of Ennos’s book. There are chapters or sections on coal and charcoal, pottery kilns, modern wooden buildings, techniques of melting and smelting metals, the history of shipbuilding, wind and watermills, deforestation and much else.... I felt like cheering." (John Carey, The Sunday Times)

"Ennos, a professor at the University of Hull and a specialist in the mechanical properties of trees, shares his insatiable curiosity with us. He applies his sharp eye for details and he does so entertainingly." (Washington Post)

"[Ennos] takes a fresh look at the familiar substance, wielding it like a wedge to pry open our past, examine our present and even glimpse our future." (Wall Street Journal)

Overall pretty good.

I liked all the information this book provided, very informative. I didn't really agree with the conclusions or some of the narratives they crafted though - I'm definitely more of a technophile than the author and didn't find the world they outlined at the end particularly appealing.