After the ice

What Hacker News says

1. throwup238Oct 2025
   That’s true for most mass market crap but that’s a low bar because it’s all just escapism in a different format. Books still have a much higher signal to noise ratio and information density than all content short of academic textbooks or courses (and I’ll die on that hill).

   Sapiens is a good example of that kind of mass market crap. I’m currently reading After the Ice by Mithen and The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow which are much better attempts at pop-academia takes at early human history. Even just the notes section of those books is a goldmine for sources that you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere else outside a dense textbook.

   Now with AI it’s easier than ever to stick to the good (nonfiction) stuff. Ask it for book recommendations and then ask it to search online for criticisms/reviews of their accuracy. I used to double check the sources for the reviews but never found any broad strokes inaccuracies.

   Show morethread
2. nfgDec 2020
   ‘After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000–5000 BC’ by Steven Mithen was excellent when I read it ~10 years ago.

   https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674019997

   thread
3. dayofthedaleksAug 2020
   I enjoyed 'After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5000 BC' by Steven Mithen

   https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674019997

   thread
4. mklJul 2019
   After the Ice by Steven Mithen: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/264288.After_the_Ice

   It's a doorstop of a book, but very interesting, tracing the threads of hunter-gatherers transitioning to civilisations all over the world, 20,000 - 5,000 BCE.

   thread
5. mklApr 2014
   This and many other sites feature in a great book I'm reading, After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000-5,000 BC by Steven Mithen. http://www.amazon.co.uk/After-Ice-Global-Human-History/dp/07...
   thread
6. arethuzaJul 2010
   Have you read this?

   "After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000-5000 BC"

   http://www.amazon.com/After-Ice-Global-History-000-5000/dp/0...

   thread