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Title: First Peoples in a New World

Subtitle: Colonizing Ice Age America

Author: David J. Meltzer

Narrator: Christopher Prince

Format: Abridged

Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-15-11

Publisher: University Press Audiobooks

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 35 votes

Genres: History, American

Publisher's Summary:

More than 12,000 years ago, in one of the greatest triumphs of prehistory, humans colonized North America, a continent that was then truly a new world. Just when and how they did so has been one of the most perplexing and controversial questions in archaeology. This dazzling, cutting-edge synthesis, written for a wide audience by an archaeologist who has long been at the center of these debates, tells the scientific story of the first Americans: where they came from, when they arrived, and how they met the challenges of moving across the vast, unknown landscapes of Ice Age North America. David J. Meltzer pulls together the latest ideas from archaeology, geology, linguistics, skeletal biology, genetics, and other fields to trace the breakthroughs that have revolutionized our understanding in recent years. Among many other topics, he explores disputes over the hemisphere's oldest and most controversial sites and considers how the first Americans coped with changing global climates. He also confronts some radical claims: that the Americas were colonized from Europe or that a crashing comet obliterated the Pleistocene megafauna. Full of entertaining discriptions of on-site encounters, personalities, and controversies, this is a compelling behind-the-scenes account of how science is illuminating our past. The book is published by University of California Press.

Critic Reviews:

"A natural storyteller, David Meltzer gives us a vivid picture of both the colonizing bands of humans who moved into the Americas and the researchers who followed their footsteps from Alaska to Chile. This is an insider's account, told with a keen eye and sense of humor, as if Meltzer were there when discoveries were made and when disputes were aired - as, indeed, he often was." (Ann Gibbons, author of The First Human)

Members Reviews:

First Peoples - Fantastic

This is a fantastic summary of our present understanding of early human life in America. It not only gave me a good summary of migration to and through America, but also the science behind this understanding. Though the explanations got quite technical at times (genetics, for example), I never felt overwhelmed. Both the writing and reading were great.

great read, learned alot

Absorbed alot of great and very detailed information, if you take interest in the subject it's very easy for the narrator to carry you through the book. Also read the book and I feel like hearing a guy speed through it clean helps understanding as well

Last Gasp of American Anthropological Orthodoxy

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I would, on the sole condition that I may brief them beforehand and debrief them afterwards.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

It was as expected, a defense and reinforcement.

What does Christopher Prince bring to the story that you wouldnt experience if you just read the book?

He reads faster than I do, so it was finished sooner.

Could you see First Peoples in a New World being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

I should hope not. These old stories have been worn out.

Any additional comments?

Expect an anthropological book written from the recent and dominant American academic perspective. The author cannot help but leap out of science or massage it thoroughly into the acceptable and desired sociopolitical narratives.