The city has killed most of your ancestors, and it's probably killing
you, too - this book tells you why.
Imagine you are a hunter-gatherer some 12,000 years ago. You've got a
choice - carry on foraging or plant a few seeds and move to one of those
new-fangled settlements down the valley. What you won't know is that
urban life is short and riddled with dozens of new diseases; your
children will be shorter and sicklier than you are; they'll be plagued
with gum disease and stand a decent chance of violent death at the point
of a spear. Why would anyone choose this?
But choose they did. Why? This is one of the many intriguing questions
tackled by Brenna Hassett in Built on Bones. Based on research on
skeletal remains from around the world, this book explores the history
of humanity's experiment with the metropolis and looks at why our
ancestors chose city life and, by and large, have stuck to it. It
explains the diseases, the deaths and the many other misadventures that
we have unwittingly unleashed upon ourselves throughout the metropolitan
past and, as the world becomes increasingly urbanised, what we can look
forward to in the future.
Built on Bones offers accessible insight into a critical but
relatively unheralded aspect of the human story: our recent evolution.
It tells the story of shifts in human longevity, growth and health that
have occurred as we transitioned from a mobile to a largely settled
species. Beginning with the very earliest experiments in settling down,
the narrative moves slowly forward in time, with each chapter discussing
a new element of humanity's great urban experiment.
