Humans and their immediate ancestors were successful hunter-gatherers
for hundreds of thousands of years, but in the last fifteen thousand
years humans have gone from finding food to farming it, from seasonal
camps to sprawling cities, from a few people to hordes. Drawing on her
own fieldwork in the Mediterranean, Africa, Asia, and beyond,
archeologist Brenna Hassett explores the long history of urbanization
through revolutionary changes written into the bones of the people who
lived it.
For every major new lifestyle, another way of dying appeared. From the
"cradle of civilization" in the ancient Near East to the dawn of
agriculture on the American plains, skeletal remains and fossils show
evidence of shorter lives, rotten teeth, and growth interrupted. The
scarring on human skeletons reveals that getting too close to animals
had some terrible consequences, but so did getting too close to too many
other people.
Each chapter of Built on Bones moves forward in time, discussing in
depth humanity's great urban experiment. Hassett explains the diseases,
plagues, epidemics, and physical dangers we have unwittingly unleashed
upon ourselves throughout the urban past--and, as the world becomes
increasingly urbanized, what the future holds for us. In a time when
"Paleo" lifestyles are trendy and so many of us feel the pain of the
city daily grind, this book asks the critical question: Was it worth it?