Homo Britannicus

The Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project was started in 2001 with the aim of using modern methods of palaentology to find out more about the various waves of people which have occupied our islands. In Homo Britannicus Chris Stringer (the director of the project) tells the reader some of the results of this project - how it is now thought that Britain was occupied as much as 700000 years ago, but how sensitive this occupation was to the changes of climate. Chris Stringer is an experienced writer, and the book contains plenty to interest the reader - it certainly whetted my appetite to find out more about the subject.

Except that this was only after the first fifty pages or so - I found it rather hard to get into this book. It starts with a longish chapter on 19th and early 20th century palaentologists, and I feel that it would have been much better if Stringer had started immediately with the main material of the book, adding historical material where appropriate. This work is definitely in the 'coffee table book' format, and at the start I worried that this would mean that it had plenty of glossy pictures (which it does), but little of real interest. However, as I got into the book I was pleasantly surprised.