The Last Lost World by Lydia & Stephen Pyne

From The Week of October 22, 2012 As much as the occasional upheavals in our lives may suggest otherwise, most of our days are lived in a stable,predictable environment. Variables like the weather do their best to roil this consistent brew, but these represent only a handful of chaotic forces agitating within an assembly of normality. Everything from the composition of the atmosphere we breathe to the menagerie of the organisms we come across are indistinguishable from conditions 50 years ago, 500 years ago, perhaps even 5,000 years ago. What we know of the world has been the world since humans discovered agriculture ten millennia ago. But has the Earth forever been this way? In the thousands of millennia prior to the rise of humanity, was the planet then as we think of it now? And if not,just how different was it from what we know so well? Ms. Pyne and Mr. Pyne attempt to explain this muddled text.

Beginning more than two million years ago, the Pleistocene is the most recent of Earth's periodic ice ages, each of which have profoundly transformed the planet's climate and the creatures that live within it. While Warm temperatures accelerate the propagation of most species, cold temperatures, especially temperatures which leave large chunks of the planet covered in ice, are deadly to them, making food far too scarce for most species to survive. This affect is particularly hard on larger species which, in dying off, open the door to smaller mammals who are free to flourish in this, at least for them, new and less dangerous environment. Though humans have adapted remarkably well to these new conditions, they are not alone. Animals from bears to elephants have weathered these same interglacial storms, putting their paws, hooves and muzzles into the ring to be the new apex predators. However, unfortunately for them, tooth and claw, feather and fir have lost out to the hairless ape who has used his mind to conquer and control all that lays before him.

Of course, looking back millions of years to divine the truths of the planet's past is not easy. It relies largely on the finding and the proper studying of fossils which can tell us much about not only the kinds of creatures that once walked the Earth but the climate they walked in and the enemies they fought in order to survive. The Last Lost World takes the reader on a journey through some of these fossils and the caves that have sheltered them for millennia. Through this process, interesting facts about the Pleistocene and our role within it are revealed and carefully examined, inspected for bias and finally judged based on their validity in hopes of making clearer our lamentably opaque picture of Earth's many and varied pasts.

Though their intentions are good and their studiousness admirable, The Last Lost World is in every way a pedantic nightmare. Ms. Pyne and Mr. Pyne might well be excellent academics and admirable analysts of fossil records, but they have assembled a disastrous study of the Pleistocene that concerns itself infinitely more with the study of the era rather than the era itself. Yes, some species, like the cave bear, are touched on. And certainly, they pause in their navel-gazing long enough to elaborate on the missing links in humanity's evolutionary chain. But these are merely rest stops on a journey into self-flagellation. For our authors here are consumed by the human biases inherent in defining the Pleistocene and in how these biases reflect more broadly on humanity itself, topics which, I'm sure, hold academic interest for some, but surely not for the layity.

The Last Lost World casts wretchedly little light upon the mysteries and the accepted truths of Earth's ice ages, their characteristics, their durations, even their mechanics. There is certainly room enough here for a discussion of scientific methodologies, especially in the age of climate deniers. Good science is thoroughly tested science. But instead of being treated to a wise and warning-filled coda, the reader is bombarded with a rambling dissertation on the nature of scientific classification, the ruminations on which are torturously extended out into a discussion about human nature that only an academic could love. I left the work knowing very little about the actual Pleistocene which was ostensibly the subject of this ponderous work.

Profoundly flawed. Wikipedia was far more informative. (1/5 Stars)