Cro-Magnon: The Story of the Last Ice Age People of Europe, by Trenton Holliday, is a sometimes dense and technical book, but that shouldn’t scare people off of this highly informative exploration of some of our closest ancestors in our evolutionary tree (or bush to be more accurate). It’s certainly a title well worth picking up for anyone who has an interest in human evolutionary history, and it does a nice job of dispelling some stubborn myths about our ancestors.

Holliday covers several broad categories, including how Cro-Magnon and Neandertals differ from Sapiens and each other, biological/physical differences (and similarities), genetics, behavior, encounters between Neandertals and Cro-Magnon, tool us, art, adaptation to a changing environment, and speculation on why they went extinct. We also get a very brief history of how evolution as a theory developed, early discoveries of pre-sapiens fossils and thoughts on those discoveries at the time, explanation of various dating techniques, descriptions of particularly significant fossil/archaeological sites—many of which Holliday himself has either visited or worked on, and more.

For a relatively short work, it’s filled with information and any lay reader will come away far more knowledgeable on the topic. Holliday is always clear and precise and makes for an engaging personal tour guide as well. As noted, the book can get dense in its detail, say for instance when comparing tools, and readers can perhaps get lost in a thicket of names, either personal names of various paleoanthropologists and other scientists or names of various technologies (or “industries” in the field’s terminology), time periods, or anatomical descriptions.

So yes, you can at time get sentences like: “this is known as midfacial prognathism, and it is one of the most salient Neandertal features. In contrast, the Cro-Magnon face, like ours today, is largely nonprojecting, or orthognathic, instead showing neuro-orbital convergence . . .” But as noted, this shouldn’t put you off reading this, for several reasons. One is a very simple if not preferred option: these are relatively brief passages and so one can easily skip/skim through these passages, or through detailed charts/illustrations and not lose the general thrust of whatever Holliday is trying to convey.

Another reason is because while these terms are unfamiliar ones, Holliday always gives the reader an explanation. For instance, in the above-quoted example, before giving us the technical term (midfacial prognathism), he explains how Neandertal faces project outward, particularly around the nose and front teeth, so we can easily visualize what he’s saying before he gives us the tough vocabulary. And while the terms are unfamiliar, they aren’t in ancient Sanskrit, so it’s more a matter of slowing down one’s reading to better understand what is being described as opposed to being completely at sea (as say, one might be in a physics book filled with math equations, Greek symbols, wholly unfamiliar words, and unfamiliar use of familiar words like “spin”). I can’t say I absorbed all the details here, or even that I, at my level of knowledge and interest necessarily needed them, but I’m glad Holliday gave them to me anyway and let me decide how much I needed to know and to what degree.

Two other strengths of the book are how up-to-date the findings are and how transparent Holliday is with regard to those findings and what conclusions are drawn from them. For a number of reasons, archaeological sites, dating conclusions, and behavioral interpretations can all be contested in some fashion and to some degree. It might be simply the built-in error rate of the dating method, it might be that a site (particularly older ones) wasn’t excavated to the most exacting standards. Holliday is always good about presenting any such controversies, giving the reader both viewpoints toward a particular conclusion, say about whether a find shows us Cro-Magnon were responsible for creating art for instance. He gives his stance, but never fails to say whether others might disagree. Or vice versa, where he’ll give another scientist’s conclusion (or several scientists’) and then give his views on whether he disagrees, or maybe agrees but with a lesser degree of confidence, and then tells us his reasoning. I’ve certainly read other popular science works where authors were far less transparent about conclusions, presenting something as a given or a consensus view without the reader being told that in fact there is some significant disagreement with that view within the field.

Coming in at just under 300 pages,, Cro-Magnon couldn’t help but be dense to convey all that Holliday is trying to communicate here, but his clarity, precision, and awareness of audience go a long way to ameliorating any of the difficulties that density might present. As do the large number of very welcome visuals: charts, diagrams of tools, etc. Meanwhile, his voice is always engaging, enhanced by his experience in the field, which lends a nicely personal touch. Highly recommended.

A truly fascinating account which is very relevant given the current concerns about climate change. The author makes obscure facts extremely accessible and has amassed a wealth of useful references and analysis. This is a gripping book which will make you want to know more about this fascinating period.

Cro-Magnon by Trenton Holliday was received directly from the publisher and I chose to review it. Firstly, keep in mind this is NOT a fiction novel, it is a scientific book to help the reader learn things about Cro-Magnon man, whom we have all heard of but know little about. After reading this book you will know more about the Cro-Magnon man than you ever dreamed of. You will also know about climate change, how it has been around forever, and how it is in no way, shape or form, manmade. Trust the science, not the people making money. If you, or someone you buy a gift for, want to learn about human history, give this book a read.

4 Stars

I was excited to read Cro-Magnon, but I was very disappointed. I have many books on the Neanderthals, so a book on early modern humans would, I thought, be right in my wheelhouse. Sadly, this author has penned an autobiography that offers, in my opinion, too little science.

While there are some interesting parts especially in the early human journey, the connections were ponderous to get through. I struggled to follow the gist of the thesis and was often lost in what seemed to be much minutia,'

Got to say I am not an anthropologist or archeologist ( a biologist), but what started with great promise based on the description devolved into tedium without sufficient reference citations.

I cannot say that I would recommend this to any causal non-anthropologist. Since I am not in that field, I would have to leave any positive recommendation to those in that specialty.

Naturally, this book covers much of the same ground as Brian Fagan's 2010 book, also titled Cro-Magnon. As one would expect, Fagan's book, from a commercial press, is aimed somewhat more toward lay readers. Holliday;s book includes somewhat more technical material, but most of it is still accessible by non-specialists. Indeed, Holliday's book is a somewhat odd mixture of scientific data and more chatty material about his friends, family, and opinions. One sign of the latter kind of material is his remarkably frequent use of exclamation points; if I were his editor I would recommend cutting back on those.

Both Fagan and Holliday are distinguished experts in the field, and either book would be acceptable for the general reader, but Holliday's book includes a fair amount of material which was unknown only thirteen years ago, when Fagan;s book was published. In fact, Holliday points out that "the year 2010," the very year when Fagan's book was published, "was full of surprises." Perhaps most notably, "genes from the Denisova hominins are found today in some people from Asia and Australasia, so these prehistoric people, like Neandertals, are a non-African group whose genes flowed into H. sapiens." The first Denisovan remains were only discovered in 2010, so Fagan could obviously not cover this important development. Of course, there will be more discoveries in the next thirteen years and so on--such is the nature of scientific knowledge--but Hollidays book provides thorough and convincing coverage of what the scientific world knows right now.