Lost Worlds: How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, and Built Our World

Historian Wyman (The Verge) upends myths about the rise of civilization in this profound and enchanting study. He begins by noting that “in the last several decades, our grasp of humanity’s distant past has been utterly transformed” thanks to a technological revolution in the archaeological sciences. Lidar scanning, ground-penetrating radar, and DNA analysis “have generated so much data” that most people “have yet to fully grasp just how much our basic story of humanity’s past has changed.” The traditional story, he suggests, is that of “an orderly sequence... from foraging to farming... to city-dwelling.” Recent research, however, shows that major developments like farming, permanent villages, and state structures were invented independently, again and again, around the globe. This revelation “points toward a new... more variable understanding of the human past” as one of kinetic, continuous social experimentation. “For every success story,” Wyman notes, there were “just as many who came, thrived, and then died out,” like the people who built Stonehenge, who “effectively disappeared from the genetic... record.” Thus, the distant past presents a series of case studies, and, as “our species faces immense challenges in the future,” he argues, humanity must attend to these examples more carefully, since “we cannot afford to waste the very insights that might help us survive once more.” In a narrative at once demystifying and awe-inspiring, Wyman vividly conjures the distant past while at the same time making it seem like a window into the future. It’s a remarkable achievement. (May)