A Land (The Concord Library)

Rating:
Summary: All of a Piece
Review: The book, written a half century ago, should be more widely known than it is. The author, a professional anthropologist, traces out the history of Britain geologically from the time of the first vertebrates, and anthropologically from the first human settlement during the last ice age more than 40,000 years ago. This is an eminently readable treatise, with rich, beautifully written prose throughout and accompanied with a touch of poetry. The book lacks illustrations and maps, and may be slightly the poorer for it to some readers, though not to me. The first part covering the Paleozoic and Mesozoic Eras suffers from the inevitable omission of two subsequent discoveries; one is plate tectonics which bring about continental drift, and the other is the sudden and dramatic end to the dinosaurs and most Mesozoic life in a fiery asteroid impact 65 million years ago. The latter reintroduces us to catastrophism in earthly science, after uniformitarianism had held sway for more than a century and in this book. Nevertheless, Hawkes is remarkably free of much need for revision, despite these omissions, with prose that carries all before it. Nature and man appear all of a piece to Hawkes, even if this unity cannot be sharply defined. It is an equivalence that works despite the two different time rates.