PhilPaine.com

I’ve been read­ing every­thing I can find on this sub­ject for months, now, and this is by far the best book I’ve seen. It is mod­i­fy­ing some of my views, and re-enforc­ing oth­ers. It will take me some time to absorb and reflect on the mate­r­ial, here, so I will not leap to a con­clu­sive judg­ment until it has been well-mulled. What­ever your views on the sub­ject of the neolith­ic tran­si­tion to agri­cul­ture, this book is essen­tial read­ing. It brings togeth­er the main blocks of evi­dence (from archae­l­og­y, lin­guis­tics, genet­ics, pale­o­cli­ma­tol­ogy, skele­tal anthro­pol­ogy, plant and ani­mal biol­ogy) in a bal­anced and sys­tem­atic way. In most cas­es, Bell­wood lets the evi­dence speak for itself, and draws con­clu­sions only when they seem com­pelled by the facts. I think he is miss­ing a major the­o­ret­i­cal ele­ment, if my hunch­es remain con­sis­tent with the evi­dence as it stands. But I think this will require more sat­u­ra­tion in the exist­ing lit­er­a­ture, before I start mouthing off. I’m an ama­teur and an out­sider. This can be an advan­tage, in cer­tain cir­cum­stances, as the his­tory of sci­ence has shown, but it is also very easy for an ama­teur to drift into crankery — which I hope nev­er to do.