Summary of Francis Pryor's Britain BC

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: #1 The Three-Age System of Stone, Bronze, and Iron was developed by a museum curator in 1836. It is based on the relative technological difficulty of fashioning stone, bronze, and iron. It was revolutionary stuff a full eighteen years before the appearance of On the Origin of Species.#2 The first three chapters of this book will be about the earliest archaeological period, the Palaeolithic, or Old Stone Age. The archaeologists and anthropologists who study the Old Stone Age are grappling with concepts of universal, or fundamental, importance. When and where did humankind originate.#3 The study of genetics has been transformed by molecular biology, but it is not always realized how profound that transformation has been. Human beings and the great apes share a common ancestor who lived around five million years ago, but our roots are more like those of grasses and shrubs.#4 The dating of the bones and rocks used to date them depends on various scientific techniques, but not on radiocarbon, which is ineffective on samples over about forty thousand years old. Palaeolithic archaeology relies more on the dating of geological deposits than on dating the finds themselves.