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Ancestors
- A Prehistory of Britain in Seven Burials
- Narrated by: Alice Roberts
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
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Publisher's summary
‘This is a terrific, timely and transporting book - taking us heart, body and mind beyond history, to the fascinating truth of the prehistoric past and the present’ Bettany Hughes
We often think of Britain springing from nowhere with the arrival of the Romans. But in Ancestors, pre-eminent archaeologist, broadcaster and academic Professor Alice Roberts explores what we can learn about the very earliest Britons, from burial sites and by using new technology to analyse ancient DNA.
Told through seven fascinating burial sites, this groundbreaking prehistory of Britain teaches us more about ourselves and our history: how people came and went and how we came to be on this island. It explores forgotten journeys and memories of migrations long ago, written into genes and preserved in the ground for thousands of years.
This is a book about belonging: about walking in ancient places, in the footsteps of the ancestors. It explores our interconnected global ancestry, and the human experience that binds us all together. It’s about reaching back in time, to find ourselves, and our place in the world.
CRYPT, THE FINAL BOOK IN ALICE ROBERTS' BRILLIANT TRILOGY, IS OUT NOW.
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Three Stones Make a Wall
- The Story of Archaeology
- By: Eric H. Cline
- Narrated by: LJ Ganser
- Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1922, Howard Carter peered into Tutankhamun's tomb for the first time, the only light coming from the candle in his outstretched hand. Urged to tell what he was seeing through the small opening he had cut in the door to the tomb, the Egyptologist famously replied, "I see wonderful things". Carter's fabulous discovery is just one of the many spellbinding stories told in Three Stones Make a Wall.
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Some shallow digs into archaeology
- By Beechwold on 10-09-20
By: Eric H. Cline
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Cahokia
- Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi
- By: Timothy Pauketat
- Narrated by: George Wilson
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Professor Timothy R. Pauketat illuminates the riveting discovery of the largest pre-Columbian city on U.S. soil. Once a flourishing metropolis of 20,000 people in 1050, Cahokia had rotted away by 1400. Its earthen mounds near modern-day St. Louis reveal “woodhenges” and evidence of large-scale human sacrifice.
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probably better in hard copy
- By Mary on 06-05-11
By: Timothy Pauketat
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The Sediments of Time
- My Lifelong Search for the Past
- By: Meave Leakey, Samira Leakey
- Narrated by: Susan Lyons
- Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Preeminent paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey brings us along on her remarkable journey to reveal the diversity of our early pre-human ancestors and how past climate change drove their evolution. She offers a fresh account of our past, as recent breakthroughs have allowed new analysis of her team’s fossil findings and vastly expanded our understanding of our ancestors. Meave’s own personal story is replete with drama, from thrilling discoveries on the shores of Lake Turkana to run-ins with armed herders and every manner of wildlife, to raising her children....
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Brilliant!
- By tess koffler on 04-07-21
By: Meave Leakey, and others
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River Kings
- A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads
- By: Cat Jarman
- Narrated by: Christine Rendel
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Three years ago, a Carnelian bead came into Catrine Jarman's temporary possession. River Kings sees her trace the path of this ancient piece of jewelry back to eighth-century Baghdad and India, discovering along the way that the Vikings' route was far more varied than we might think—that with them came people from the Middle East, and that the reason for this unexpected integration between the Eastern and Western worlds may well have been a slave trade running through the Silk Road, all the way to Britain.
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Like school
- By Amazon Customer on 09-08-24
By: Cat Jarman
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Lost Cities, Ancient Tombs
- 100 Discoveries That Changed the World
- By: Ann R. Williams - editor, Douglas Preston - introduction
- Narrated by: Mari Weiss
- Length: 14 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Blending high adventure with history, this chronicle of 100 astonishing discoveries from the Dead Sea Scrolls to the fabulous “Lost City of the Monkey God” tells incredible stories of how explorers and archaeologists have uncovered the clues that illuminate our past.
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Just what I wanted
- By Amazon Customer on 01-16-22
By: Ann R. Williams - editor, and others
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The Memory Code
- The Secrets of Stonehenge, Easter Island and Other Ancient Monuments
- By: Dr. Lynne Kelly
- Narrated by: Louise Siverson
- Length: 11 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In ancient, pre-literate cultures across the globe, tribal elders had encyclopedic memories. They could name all the animals and plants across a landscape, identify the stars in the sky, and recite the history of their people. Yet today, most of us struggle to memorize more than a short poem. Using traditional Aboriginal Australian song lines as a starting point, Dr. Lynne Kelly has since identified the powerful memory technique used by our ancestors and indigenous people around the world.
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Interesting topic , uninteresting listen.
- By Daniel Pisegna on 04-28-18
By: Dr. Lynne Kelly
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Cro-Magnon
- How the Ice Age Gave Birth to the First Modern Humans
- By: Brian Fagan
- Narrated by: James Langton
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Best-selling author Brian Fagan brings early humans out of the deep freeze with his trademark mix of erudition, cutting-edge science, and vivid storytelling. Cro-Magnon reveals human society in its infancy, facing enormous environmental challenges - including a rival species of humans, the Neanderthals. For ten millennia, Cro-Magnons lived side by side with Neanderthals, an encounter that Fagan fills with drama.
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Fact and fiction
- By Paul on 08-12-10
By: Brian Fagan
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Born in Africa
- The Quest for the Origins of Human Life
- By: Martin Meredith
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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In Born in Africa, Martin Meredith follows the trail of discoveries about human origins made by scientists over the last hundred years, recounting their intense rivalry, personal feuds, and fierce controversies, as well as their feats of skill and endurance. The results have been momentous. Scientists have identified more than 20 species of extinct humans. They have firmly established Africa as the birthplace not only of humankind but also of modern humans.
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A Brief History of Paleoanthropology
- By Jeff Harris on 05-06-13
By: Martin Meredith
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A Short History of Humanity
- A New History of Old Europe
- By: Johannes Krause, Thomas Trappe, Caroline Waight - translator
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Johannes Krause is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and a brilliant pioneer in the field of archaeogenetics - archaeology augmented by DNA sequencing technology - which has allowed scientists to reconstruct human history reaching back hundreds of thousands of years before recorded time. In this surprising account, Krause and journalist Thomas Trappe rewrite a fascinating chapter of this history, the peopling of Europe, that takes us from the Neanderthals and Denisovans to the present.
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Not a short history of humanity
- By Brent on 05-02-21
By: Johannes Krause, and others
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Awesome read… when is the next one?
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Wonderfully detailed
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Wonderfully Accessible
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Awesome read… when is the next one?
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There are better sources to get real information
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Homo Sapiens Rediscovered
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exactly what I've been looking for
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Powers and Thrones
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When the once-mighty city of Rome was sacked by barbarians in 410 and lay in ruins, it signaled the end of an era—and the beginning of a thousand years of profound transformation. In a gripping narrative bursting with big names—from St Augustine and Attila the Hun to the Prophet Muhammad and Eleanor of Aquitaine—Dan Jones charges through the history of the Middle Ages. Powers and Thrones takes listeners on a journey through an emerging Europe, the great capitals of late Antiquity, as well as the influential cities of the Islamic West.
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Hard to take a break from it!
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What listeners say about Ancestors
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Katie T
- 08-22-23
Gender lecture
Enjoyed the journey throughout the book. Did not enjoy a political lecture in end about five or more genders because of a mirror. Buried my grande his wife’s jewley because it was a gift. Don’t infer gender by grave goods. Contradictory. Enjoyable voice.
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- Hebe,
- 05-07-22
Great losten
Really enjoyed this audible book. Well paced and interesting. Alice Roberts has a easy to follow voice. Recommend.
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- James
- 06-26-21
Current narrative
The coverage of up to date knowledge of ancient Britain in regard to archeological and DNA evidence is fascinating. The author however cannot help but intersperse this with long digressions of some feminist, gender and historical perspectives that can currently be found being pushed on many humanities faculties. Finding a mirror in a probable male grave somehow leads to a lecture on current leftist gender views and the statement that there may be five or more genders? Another example is the description of how there was an almost complete replacement of people’s in Britain with the new peoples exhibiting identifiably different DNA, physiology and culture. That all leads into a lecture on racism and how anyone not agreeing is a racist. Yet one definition of race is “A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct by society.”
Confusing, it’s almost as if she if arguing against herself or was it necessary to make such statements to get published?
Other than that it’s an interesting listen.
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10 people found this helpful
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- K Weil
- 06-20-23
Not just scientific but engaging and personal, as well
I loved the conversational tone of the writer/reader. It made me feel as if I were walking beside her and looking into the past along with her. I appreciated her frank discussion about the pitfalls of allowing preconceived ideas to influence our interpretation of the remnants of history.
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- Margalarg
- 07-29-21
Excellent up-to-date perspectives on archaeology
Alice Roberts combines the personal with the professional in her engaging history not just of seven burials, but, also of the changing nature of archeology due both to technical advances and philosophical changes in the way we construe concepts such as "culture," "gender," and "community." Her descriptions of the burials themselves, in chronological order, provide a marvelous sense of the form and contents of the burials, the similarities as well as key differences between them. Roberts often steps back from the description to discuss how these objects and places have been considered by those who discovered or studied them in the past, as well as how she and other scholars think about them today. Through this we get a veritable history of archaeological approaches that is quite thought-provoking in terms of how each era or area constructs notions of community, ritual, status, gender and power, among others. Roberts draws on many scholars, past and present, to illuminate differing theories and ways of considering artifacts and how they produce meaning for those who encounter them and interpret them to the wider public. In the process, she encourages her readers to understand not only how access to objective facts about grave goods have become more available through DNA, radio-carbon dating and other techniques,--often challenging long-held theories-- but also how scholars' subjective assumptions and biases contribute to beliefs about such concepts as cultural identity, human nature, community and progress. Roberts' accessible language, explanations and examples invite all readers to consider how knowledge of the human past is created.
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5 people found this helpful
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- A. Griffin
- 01-18-22
More past less present
This was not as advertised. Mostly speculation . I did enjoy the listen , it was mostly what earlier people did and thought and how they got it wrong or right.
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- Anonymous User
- 03-27-22
Brilliant in all aspects until we hit chapter 12
Brilliant in all aspects until we hit chapter 12 And then the gender identity discussions began.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Britt Clopton
- 03-16-22
Misleading title, doesn't focus on the ancestors.
Was more about the boring, small minded, religious, men making foolish assumptions about archeological discoveries than about the ancient ancestors themselves. I listened for a few hours about their foolhardy leaps in logic and religion-bound prejudices before I just became too frustrated to keep listening. Why did we spend so much time with their stories, instead of learning about the actual ancestors?
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2 people found this helpful
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- amy sue
- 12-01-23
Highly recommend
Alice Roberts is an excellent narrator and public historian. The book is well-written, engaging and the subject matter is very thought-provoking.
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- Leslie RP
- 03-17-24
Enjoyable and informative
I liked the pacing and information. I appreciate the information on how things are tested and information on related finds, I recommend this book,
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