Bibliograph

The last lost world, the meaning of the Pleistocene, Lydia V. Pyne and Stephen J. Pyne

Type

Label

The last lost world, the meaning of the Pleistocene, Lydia V. Pyne and Stephen J. Pyne

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references and index

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

The last lost world

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

757838211

Responsibility statement

Lydia V. Pyne and Stephen J. Pyne

Sub title

the meaning of the Pleistocene

Summary

An investigation of the Pleistocene's dual character, as a geologic time, and as a cultural idea. The Pleistocene is the epoch of geologic time closest to our own, a time of ice ages, global migrations, and mass extinctions--of woolly rhinos, mammoths, giant ground sloths, and not least, early species of Homo. It's the world that created ours. But outside that environmental story there exists a parallel narrative that describes how our ideas about the Pleistocene have emerged. This story explains the place of the Pleistocene in shaping intellectual culture, and the role of a rapidly evolving culture in creating the idea of the Pleistocene and in establishing its dimensions. This second story addresses how the epoch, its Earth-shaping events, and its creatures, both those that survived and those that disappeared, helped kindle new sciences and a new origins story as the sciences split from the humanities as a way of looking at the past.--From publisher description

Table Of Contents

Prologue : Mossel Bay, South Africa -- pt. 1. How the Pleistocene got its ice. Rift ; Ice ; Story -- pt. 2. The great game. Footnotes to Plato ; Out of Africa ; Missing links ; New truths, heresies, superstitions ; The ancients and the moderns -- pt. 3. How the Pleistocene lost its tale. The hominin who would be king ; The Anthropocene ; Epilogue : Rift redux

Classification