Recent reading

I haven't been blogging about my reading much of late because there hasn't been much of it! I've been busier than normal settling in at my new job, and I've also had enough going on with editing my own work, helping my critique partners, and judging a writing contest that I haven't had much time for already-published books. So, in the past two or three weeks, all I've managed to finish are two works of nonfiction.

The first, The Humans Who Went Extinct (Clive Finlayson, 2009), bills itself as being about why the Neanderthals died and we lived, but it's more of a big-picture overview of the current thinking on human evolution, as thought by Finlayson. I think he does a good job of pointing out logical flaws in the extreme version of the Out-of-Africa hypothesis (i.e. modern humans all came from Africa really recently after some kind of mental evolutionary leap enabled a cultural explosion maybe 40,000 years ago) without going to the other extreme and embracing multiregionalism, which requires you to think, contrary to any genetic evidence, that Europeans are partially descended from Neanderthals, Asians from Homo erectus, etc., but that there was enough gene flow to keep us one species of broadly equal physical and mental capacity. If Finlayson is right, Homo sapiens left Africa earlier than previously thought and before exhibiting obvious signs of culture in the forms of art or extensive trade networks, and that what helped us out-compete the Neanderthals wasn't that we were smarter, but that with our lighter bone structure and greater distance-running capacity, we were better able to hunt on the Ice Age steppes, while the bulkier Neanderthals couldn't run down their prey and needed a forest environment to thrive. Ice age maxima = less forest, more steppe, ergo fewer Neanderthals, more Homo sapiens.

The second, Lords of the Sea (JR Hale, 2009), begins with a period of history that's always fascinated me, the Greco-Persian Wars. Only instead of focusing on the land war and the Spartan sacrifice at Thermopylae, Hale looks at the Athenian triumph at Salamis and the century or so of Athenian naval hegemony that followed it. I enjoyed the book immensely (even though, as is so often the case with Greek history, I was a bit put off by the utter masculinity of the world, even though I've never been a reader who insists that everything be All About the Women). I kept seeing similarities to later incidents from British and American history, and then realizing that of course Athens INVENTED the concept of being a democratic empire.

Watching the English

In Watching the English: the Hidden Rules of English Behaviour (Kate Fox, 2008) a social anthropologist takes on her own people. I'm internet-acquainted with Fox, just barely. She frequents a horse board where I mostly lurk and occasionally post equine questions related to my WIP. (She owns a splendid Arabian stallion named H Tobago. I'm normally not a fan of chestnuts--give me a glossy dark bay or a dapple gray--but I think Tobago is close to the platonic ideal of a horse.)

Watching the English is another book I wish I'd been able to read before my year in England. I actually didn't find the English as socially awkward as they're characterized here. I made several good friends and had a wide circle of acquaintances to go to the pub with, and got into countless fascinating conversations comparing and contrasting our countries. Maybe it helps that I'm not overly given to personal revelations in casual conversation, since that's apparently one of the prime English complaints about Americans. Could being a Southerner who was Raised Right give one a certain degree of English-style reserve?

I do wish I'd understood the nuances of the class system as outlined throughout Fox's book. Not because it would've changed how I treated anyone, but because it's interesting, all these little shibboleths.

And here I have to tell my favorite story from my time in England: I had lunch with a family from the church where I was working, and after the meal I was playing with their 4-year-old daughter. I told her to "try the red button" on a toy, and like many, maybe even most Americans, I replaced the "tt" in "button" with a glottal stop. The girl fixed me with a solemn glare and told me I was supposed to say "button," pronouncing the t's with utter precision. I smiled and said that I was American, and we have a different way of saying some words. The parents fell all over themselves apologizing--which wasn't necessary, as I was amused rather than offended--and said they were just trying to make sure she didn't develop a common accent. As soon as this came out of the mother's mouth, she realized that what she'd said was far WORSE than her daughter's attempt at retraining my errant American tongue. Next came deep crimson blushes, stammered apologies, assurances that I didn't sound common at all, that they knew the rules for Americans were different, and so on.

Anyway, having read Fox's book, I can now see that those parents were aspirational middle-middle or upper-middle class, anxious about maintaining and displaying their status. And if I were English, I'd want to be either upper or working class, because if Fox is right, they're the ones who don't feel like they have anything to prove and get to just be themselves!

(As a side note, often as I read I thought of how Seattle really is the England of America, in everything from a general reserve and reticence to gardening obsession to our strange habit of thanking bus drivers for simply doing their jobs. In England it came naturally to me--I think I thanked them at first because they were actively helping me navigate Bristol, but then noticed everyone else did it and kept it up--but when I moved to Seattle, after returning from England, I thought it was weird. Nobody ever did that in Philadelphia. Anyway, if I'm right, maybe climate is destiny. Turn people loose in mild, hilly, pleasant but damp conditions, and they become English.)

After the Ice (Book #31)

After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000-5000 BC (Stephen Mithen, 2005) covers what anthropologists currently know about the period between the peak of the last ice age and the earliest civilizations. It's informative, especially since in general there are more books about the times before and after.

However, it's also an exhaustive, and exhausting, read. Mithen uses the device of a time-traveling anthropologist observing the cultures, but he carefully maintains his nonfictional status by not speculating much beyond the archaeological record or allowing his time traveler to interact with the people he watches. And there are only so many times he can follow the men on their hunting/herding or the women on their gathering/gardening before it gets a bit old.