The Great Journey: The Peopling of Ancient America by Brian M. Fagan

Product Details

Synopsis

Widely regarded as a classic, The Great Journey tells the story of one of archaeology's great controversies: How, where, when, and why did human beings take the first steps in their journey to populate North America? In this new edition updating the debates and discoveries that have occurred since the late 1980s, internationally renowned archaeologist Brian Fagan fills us in on the latest archaeological findings on both sides of the Bering Strait. Fagan sets forth different scenarios for first settlement, the controversies over the extinction of large Ice Age animals, and a brief overview of cultural developments since the time of the Paleo-Indians. He includes new genetic and linguistic research that amplifies earlier theories, assesses the importance of global warming to first settlement, and evaluates the various routes that brought Stone Age hunter-gatherers from Siberia into North America and beyond. Illustrated with 126 photographs, line drawings, and maps, Fagan's account provides an entertaining and thorough assessment of what we know about the first Americans.

Annotation

This magnificently readable book, fully illustrated with maps, photographs, and reconstruction drawings, gives the most authoritative and up-to-date account of the first Americans yet produced.

School Library Journal

YAAmerican students traditionally study Indians of North America, but lit tle attention is paid to the original set tlement of the American continents. Here is a thorough discussion of the most probable routes that those original cave people took from Siberia, mov ingover thousands of years throughout North America and on into South America. Fagan methodically describes sites of early human habita tion which have been excavated and carefully dated and also describes vari ous controversies of method and con tent. While the book's factual content sounds imposing, Fagan's writing style is easy and relaxed, making all the in formation accessible and fascinating to lay readers, high-school students in cluded. Photographs and diagrams complete Fagan's effort, and the care ful index allows easy research by lo cale, tool use, age of excavation, etc. Books on archaeological methods, finds, and reconstruction of the history of other areas of the world are common in high-school libraries; it is time one of this quality be available on the Ameri cas. Dorcas Hand, Episcopal High School, Bellaire