Atlas of a Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America [Paperback]

The first people in the New World were few, their encampments fleeting. On a side of the planet no human had ever seen, different groups arrived from different directions, and not all at the same time. The land they reached was fully inhabited by megafauna—mastodons, giant bears, mammoths, saber-toothed cats, enormous bison, and sloths that stood one story tall. These Ice Age explorers, hunters, and families were wildly outnumbered and many would themselves have been prey to the much larger animals.
 
In Atlas of a Lost World, Craig Childs blends science and personal narrative to upend our notions of where these people came from and who they were. How they got here, persevered, and ultimately thrived is a story that resonates from the Pleistocene to our modern era, and reveals how much has changed since the time of mammoth hunters, and how little. Through it, readers will see the Ice Age, and their own age, in a whole new light.“It’s a clever, smartly written and altogether enthusiastic effort to breathe feeling and life into the human processes behind all those ancient sites, artifacts, and busted animal bones. The past is a country to which one cannot return, but “Atlas of a Lost World” at least helps you imagine what you might be missing.” —The Wall Street Journal

“A wonderful and adventurous book.” —Aspen Daily News

“Whenever I read Craig Childs I feel as if I am in the presence a passionate tour guide to exotic places, rare artifacts, and ancient bones. Childs’ Atlas of a Lost World is a transcontinental detective story about the arrival of humans in North America. About 20,000 years ago climates changed, humans spread across the globe, and a new era began lSE