
Origins
How Earth's History Shaped Human History
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Narrated by:
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John Sackville
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By:
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Lewis Dartnell
About this listen
A New York Times best-selling author explains how the physical world shaped the history of our species
When we talk about human history, we often focus on great leaders, population forces, and decisive wars. But how has the earth itself determined our destiny? Our planet wobbles, driving changes in climate that forced the transition from nomadism to farming. Mountainous terrain led to the development of democracy in Greece. Atmospheric circulation patterns later on shaped the progression of global exploration, colonization, and trade. Even today, voting behavior in the southeast United States ultimately follows the underlying pattern of 75 million-year-old sediments from an ancient sea. Everywhere is the deep imprint of the planetary on the human.
From the cultivation of the first crops to the founding of modern states, Origins reveals the breathtaking impact of the earth beneath our feet on the shape of our human civilizations.
©2019 Lewis Dartnell (P)2019 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Dartnell's story is beautifully written and organized. His infectious curiosity and enthusiasm tug the reader from page to page, synthesizing geology, oceanography, meteorology, geography, palaeontology, archaeology and political history in a manner that recalls Jared Diamond's classic 1997 book Guns, Germs, and Steel." (Nature)
"The perfect blend of science and history. This is a book that will not only challenge our preconceptions about the past, but should make us think very carefully about humanity's future. Five stars." [Mail on Sunday (UK)]
"An original and timely way of looking at human history through the materials and natural resources that our species has employed to such effect. It should be read by everyone who ponders how long exploitation can continue on a finite planet." (Richard Fortey, author of Earth)
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Stays on point
- By Alex on 04-29-23
By: Andrew Pettegree, and others
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N-4 Down
- The Hunt for the Arctic Airship Italia
- By: Mark Piesing
- Narrated by: Matt Jamie
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Triumphantly returning from the North Pole on May 24, 1928, the world-famous exploring airship Italia — code-named N-4 — was struck by a terrible storm and crashed somewhere over the Arctic ice, triggering the largest polar rescue mission in history. Helping lead the search was Roald Amundsen, the poles’ greatest explorer, who himself soon went missing in the frozen wastes. Amundsen’s body has never been found, the last victim of one of the Arctic’s most enduring mysteries....
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Interesting and entertaining
- By 2451 on 09-01-21
By: Mark Piesing
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A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages
- The World Through Medieval Eyes
- By: Anthony Bale
- Narrated by: Esh Alladi
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In this vivid and alluring history, medievalist Anthony Bale invites listeners on an odyssey across the medieval world. Journeying alongside scholars, spies, and saints, from Western Europe to the Far East, the Antipodes and the ends of the earth, Bale provides indispensable information on the exchange rate between Bohemian ducats and Venetian groats, medieval cures for seasickness, and how to avoid extortionist tour guides and singing sirens.
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Misleading title
- By Ladyethyme on 03-19-25
By: Anthony Bale
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Connecting with Life: Finding Nature in an Urban World
- By: Martin Summer
- Narrated by: Adam Barr
- Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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In his debut book, Martin Summer aims to help listeners find nature in an urban world. He discusses how our modern lives differ from the lifestyles of our ancestors. He then proceeds to cover six big problems of urbanization and their destructive impact on our lives. Practical solutions follow each discussed danger. In the next part of the book, the author reveals what connecting with nature means in today's world and why it's possible to do so even in a big city. He discusses the tricky subject of finding a compromise between technology and nature.
By: Martin Summer
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Weird
- The Power of Being an Outsider in an Insider World
- By: Olga Khazan
- Narrated by: Renata Friedman
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Most of us have at some point in our lives felt like an outsider, sometimes considering ourselves "too weird" to fit in. Growing up as a Russian immigrant in West Texas, Olga Khazan always felt there was something different about her. This feeling has permeated her life, and as she embarked on a science writing career, she realized there were psychological connections between this feeling of being an outsider and both her struggles and successes later in life.
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Weird is An Appropriate Title
- By Mary T. Peters on 08-06-20
By: Olga Khazan
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The Genesis Machine
- Our Quest to Rewrite Life in the Age of Synthetic Biology
- By: Amy Webb, Andrew Hessel
- Narrated by: Amy Webb, Andrew Hessel, Tim Campbell, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Synthetic biology promises to reveal how life is created and how it can be re-created, enabling scientists to rewrite the rules of our reality. It could help us, for example, heal without prescription medications, grow meat without harvesting animals, or confront our looming climate catastrophe. Synthetic biology will determine the ways in which we conceive future generations and how we define family, how we identify disease and treat aging, where we make our homes, and how we nourish ourselves.
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Thought provoking but politically biased
- By Andy on 07-02-22
By: Amy Webb, and others
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Fossil Men
- The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind
- By: Kermit Pattison
- Narrated by: Roger Wayne
- Length: 15 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1994, a team led by fossil-hunting legend Tim White—"the Steve Jobs of paleoanthropology"—uncovered the bones of a human ancestor in Ethiopia's Afar region. The findings challenged many assumptions about human evolution and repudiated a half-century of paleoanthropological orthodoxy. An intriguing tale of scientific discovery, obsession and rivalry that moves from the sun-baked desert of Africa to modern high-tech labs and academic lecture halls, Fossil Men is popular science at its best, and a must-listen for fans of Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, and Edward O. Wilson.
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Oh narrator
- By Paul on 01-21-21
By: Kermit Pattison
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The Middle Kingdoms
- A New History of Central Europe
- By: Martyn Rady
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 22 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Central Europe has long been infamous as a region beset by war, a place where empires clashed and world wars began. In The Middle Kingdoms, Martyn Rady offers the definitive history of the region, demonstrating that Central Europe has always been more than merely the fault line between West and East. Even as Central European powers warred with their neighbors, the region developed its own cohesive identity and produced tremendous accomplishments in politics, society, and culture.
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Marred by the errors in the modern section
- By Paul Boothroyd on 10-20-23
By: Martyn Rady
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Sleeping with the Ancestors
- How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery
- By: Joseph McGill Jr., Herb Frazier
- Narrated by: Joseph McGill Jr., Herb Frazier
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Since founding the Slave Dwelling Project project in 2010, historic preservationist Joseph McGill Jr. has been touring the country, spending the night in former slave dwellings—throughout the South, but also the North and the West, where people are often surprised to learn that such structures exist. Sleeping with the Ancestors focuses on all of the key sites McGill has visited in his ongoing project and digs deeper into the actual history of each location, using McGill’s own experience and conversations with the community to enhance those original stories.
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great documentation and expression of Black and While American History
- By Anonymous User on 12-22-24
By: Joseph McGill Jr., and others
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Who's Your Founding Father?
- One Man’s Epic Quest to Uncover the First, True Declaration of Independence
- By: David Fleming
- Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1819 John Adams came across a stunning story in his hometown Essex Register that he breathlessly described to his political frenemy Thomas Jefferson as “one of the greatest curiosities and one of the deepest mysteries that ever occurred to me…entitled the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. The genuine sense of America at that moment was never so well expressed before, nor since.”
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I listened TWICE
- By DavidF on 01-05-25
By: David Fleming
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The Ghost Forest
- Racists, Radicals, and Real Estate in the California Redwoods
- By: Greg King
- Narrated by: Galen Osier
- Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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In this gripping historical memoir, journalist and famed redwood activist Greg King examines how investors and a growing U.S. economy drove the timber industry to cut down all but 4 percent of the original two-million-acre redwood ecosystem. King first examined redwood logging in the 1980s—as an award-winning reporter. What he found in the woods convinced him to leap the line of neutrality and become an activist dedicated to saving the very last ancient redwood groves remaining in private hands.
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How the world’s most magnificent forest was destroyed!
- By John on 09-06-23
By: Greg King
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Pacific
- Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World's Superpowers
- By: Simon Winchester
- Narrated by: Simon Winchester
- Length: 14 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Best-selling author Simon Winchester offers an enthralling biography of the Pacific Ocean and its role in the modern world, exploring our relationship with this imposing force of nature. Winchester's personal experience is vast and his storytelling second to none. And his historical understanding of the region is formidable, making Pacific a paean to this magnificent sea of beauty, myth, and imagination that is transforming our lives.
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Political Asides Have Become Bombastic Didactic
- By Mark Patterson on 12-25-15
By: Simon Winchester
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The Ottomans
- Khans, Caesars, and Caliphs
- By: Marc David Baer
- Narrated by: Jamie Parker
- Length: 17 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The Ottoman Empire has long been depicted as the Islamic Asian antithesis of the Christian European West. But the reality was starkly different: the Ottomans’ multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious domain reached deep into Europe’s heart. Indeed, the Ottoman rulers saw themselves as the new Romans. Recounting the Ottomans’ remarkable rise from a frontier principality to a world empire, historian Marc David Baer traces their debts to their Turkish, Mongolian, Islamic, and Byzantine heritage.
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Great except for pronunt of Turkish names
- By Anonymous User on 11-04-22
By: Marc David Baer
What listeners say about Origins
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- GT
- 11-30-22
One valley in Africa
All of covilization from antiquity to modernity is from the resources the Earth provides and the challenges it has created for humanity. In facing our current climate challenge, we see in the Earth history a forecast for what will come if we do not meet this challenge. The Earth will be find, life will still exist, but all of the conditions that made human civilization thrive will be extinguished for millions of years.
This book is striking in how it tells the history of the planet and how we got here. Take a look at the extra material from the publisher’s website for maps and teaching aids
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- Anonymous User
- 02-20-23
Great work
I loved this book. Never really thought about the way he describes our human evolution, but it’s a fascinating timeline.
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- Michael T Urban
- 12-23-19
loved it
everything about this is excellent. Facebook at some redundancy 2 a history of life but has many other parts of information that makes it fascinating.
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4 people found this helpful
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- jaga
- 08-27-20
We are more connected than we realize!
This book explains where we came from, what we are and all of the different dimensions of the inter-relationships of all organisms on earth. Dartnell does a fantastic job explaining all of this, with detailed geological, biological and social explanations for how we got to now, including the present climate crisis. Would love to see this tied into a forward looking analysis of where we go from here.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Uhru
- 07-19-19
Geology The Traction To Civilization
Fascinating tale of how geology is the traction to civilization. A little less redundancy in the telling perhaps?
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2 people found this helpful
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- Gabriel
- 06-14-20
Excelente
De una entretenida manera el autor explica las varoables que moldearon el desarrollo de nuestra especie.
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- Samuel
- 06-21-19
Good Perspective
This book puts a good perspective on where we are now, where we came from, and and how the Earth and it's climate have shaped Humans from billions of years before their existence.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Dampé
- 04-27-21
Interesting, analytical yet lacking
Good narrator. Good scientific analysis and easy to follow. Author seemingly tiptoed through the abhorrent history of colonization in an attempt to be impartial but failed to do so as the book spends significantly more time aggrandizing colonial prowess than it does critically examining the damage it has caused. Similarly I was disappointed by the lackluster tone surrounding the current climate crisis.
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- Alec Schneggenburger
- 11-10-22
a well-explained summary of how the planet made us
a fascinating review of how the unique characteristics of our planet resulted in our Evolution and continued Mastery of the planet.
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- Anna Dubrovskaya
- 01-17-23
Very informative
This book had a soothing narrator. It was an easy listen. I liked how nicely the ideas were interwoven.
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