The Intimate Bond
How Animals Shaped Human History
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Narrated by:
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Jonathan Davis
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By:
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Brian Fagan
About this listen
Animals, and our ever-changing relationships with them, have left an indelible mark on human history. From the dawn of our existence, animals and humans have been constantly redefining their relationships with one another, and entire civilizations have risen and fallen upon this curious bond we share with our fellow fauna.
Brian Fagan unfolds this fascinating story from the first wolf who wandered into our prehistoric ancestors' camp and found companionship to empires built on the backs of horses, donkeys, and camels to the industrial age, when some animals became commodities, often brutally exploited, and others became pets, nurtured and pampered, sometimes to absurd extremes. Through an in-depth analysis of six truly transformative human-animal relationships, Fagan shows how our habits and our very way of life were considerably and irreversibly altered by our intimate bonds with animals. Among other stories, Fagan explores how herding changed human behavior; how the humble donkey helped launch the process of globalization; and how the horse carried a hearty band of nomads across the world and toppled the emperor of China.
With characteristic care and penetrating insight, Fagan reveals the profound influence that animals have exercised on human history and how, in fact, they often drove it.
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Story
Horses have a story to tell - one of resilience, sociability, and intelligence and of partnership with human beings. In The Horse, journalist and equestrienne Wendy Williams brings that story brilliantly to life. Williams chronicles the 56-million-year journey of horses as she visits with experts around the world, exploring what our biological affinities and differences can tell us about the bond between horses and humans and what our longtime companions might think and feel.
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Full of science.
- By Jennifer90046 on 02-07-17
By: Wendy Williams
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Guns, Germs and Steel
- The Fate of Human Societies
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Doug Ordunio
- Length: 16 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped the modern world. From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, he highlights the broadest movements both literal and conceptual on every continent since the Ice Age, and examines societal advances such as writing, religion, government, and technology.
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Compelling pre-history and emergent history
- By Doug on 08-25-11
By: Jared Diamond
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Unbound
- How Eight Technologies Made Us Human, Transformed Society, and Brought Our World to the Brink
- By: Richard L. Currier
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Although we usually think of technology as something unique to modern times, our ancestors began to create the first technologies millions of years ago in the form of prehistoric tools and weapons. Over time, eight key technologies gradually freed us from the limitations of our animal origins.
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Good facts, not much else
- By Joel B. Gordon on 10-30-16
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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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The Great Warming
- Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
- By: Brian Fagan
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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The history of the Great Warming of a half millennium ago suggests that we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives todayand our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the silent elephant in the room.
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Good book but unpracticed, disjointed narration.
- By Paul on 09-12-10
By: Brian Fagan
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Native American Tribes: The History of the Blackfeet and the Blackfoot Confederacy
- By: Charles River Editors
- Narrated by: Jack Chekijian
- Length: 1 hr and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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They call themselves "Niitsitapi" ("Original People"), but in the United States, they are known as the Blackfeet. In Canada, they are known by their more particular band names, one of which is Blackfoot, but regardless of the name, they are a tribe of Native American peoples ("First Nations" in Canada) who, until the modern time period, lived in small, decentralized bands and hunted the bison on the northern Great Plains.
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Excellent History of the BLACKFEET
- By Joseph Potter on 09-14-23
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Clash of Cultures
- Prehistory-1638
- By: Christopher Collier, James Lincoln Collier
- Narrated by: Jim Manchester
- Length: 1 hr and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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History is dramatic - and the renowned, award-winning authors Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier demonstrate this in this compelling series aimed at young listeners. Covering American history from the founding of Jamestown through the present day, these volumes explore far beyond the dates and events of a historical chronicle to present a moving illumination of the ideas, opinions, attitudes and tribulations that led to the birth of this great nation.
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good context
- By MonicaB on 03-03-20
By: Christopher Collier, and others
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1491
- New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Darrell Dennis
- Length: 16 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus' landing had crossed the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago; existed mainly in small nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas were, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last 30 years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong.
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Exposes Non-Academic Audience to The Debate Between Ideas of Pre-Colombian America's
- By Christopher on 01-19-17
By: Charles C. Mann
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Coyote America
- A Natural and Supernatural History
- By: Dan Flores
- Narrated by: Elijah Alexander
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Coyote America is both an environmental and a deep natural history of the coyote. It traces both the five-million-year-long biological story of an animal that has become the "wolf" in our backyards and its cultural evolution from a preeminent spot in Native American religions to the hapless foil of the Road Runner. A deeply American tale, the story of the coyote in the American West and beyond is a sort of Manifest Destiny in reverse.
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Very Enjoyable Book, Subject Matter, and Reader
- By John Townsend on 03-17-17
By: Dan Flores
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Against the Grain
- A Deep History of the Earliest States
- By: James C. Scott
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative.
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World without Women
- By Paul Richards on 04-28-18
By: James C. Scott
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Wild Horse Country
- The History, Myth, and Future of the Mustang
- By: David Philipps
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In a powerful blend of history and contemporary reporting, New York Times reporter David Philipps traces the rich history of wild horses in America: their introduction by the Spanish conquistadors, their role in the epic battles between Native Americans and settlers, their vital place in American self-mythology. He travels through some of the most remote parts of the American West, known as Wild Horse Country, to investigate the wild horse's current dilemma, caught between the clashing ideals of ranchers, scientists, and more.
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Inaccurate Read
- By Lara Hooper on 07-09-19
By: David Philipps
What listeners say about The Intimate Bond
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Bernadeane
- 04-23-15
Repetitive and shallow
This book disappoints for the lack of depth, and for the constant repetition of generic statements, like "The closeness that developed of this or that animal to human partners impacted the lives and cultures of human beings." For each animal, few concrete examples of the transformational influence or evidence of it in archaeology is provided. The book needs an editor, and more information so it isn't just a superficial summary of better treatments, like "Guns, Germs and Steel".
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- Joshua
- 02-17-16
Odd mix of science, conjecture, and personal opinions
The beginning was heavy on conjecture and imagined stories of how things might have happened with a liberal sprinkling of standard stereotypes of the noble savage, which was annoying but forgivable since the record is more than a little space that far back.
The middle was pretty good. I learned quite a bit about some of the less common animals like camels, but most of the material is found in other books I've read.
The end just got weird. He starts moralizing about how abhorrent modern uses of animals are, despite having romanticized some earlier uses it at least give fairer treatment to abuse of animals in past eras. Seems to have bought the animal rights narratives about how animals are used today in agriculture and science without bothering to verify the accuracy of their claims (which as an Animal Scientist I can assure you are strongly distorted where not actually flat out wrong).
Overall I was disappointed by the entire experience because the annoyances at the beginning and the heavy handed moralizing at the far out weigh the benefits of the middle to me.
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