The Age of Wood by Roland Ennos
The Age of Wood
Roland Ennos
Our most useful material and the construction of civilization
From the back cover:
"Humans have made astonishing progress since our ancestors came down from the trees. But how did the descendants of small primates manage to walk upright, become top predators, and populate the world? How were humans able to develop civilizations and product a global economy? Now, in The Age of Wood, Roland Ennos shows for the first time that the key to our success has been our relationship with wood.
Brilliantly synthesizing recent research with exiting knowledge in fields as wide-ranging as primatology, anthropology, archaeology, history, architecture, engineering, and carpentry, Ennos shows how our ability to exploit wood's unique properties has profoundly shaped our bodies and minds, societies, and lives. He takes us on a sweeping sixty-million-year journey from Southeast Asia and West Africa, where the brains of great apes were stimulated by the need the navigate within trees and fashion tools; to China and Japan, where wooden temples and palaces were constructed; to Europe, where wood first was transformed into violins and pianos and provided paper for books and newspapers; to England, which built an empire with wooden ships; and nineteenth-century America, where the young nation depended upon the great forests for houses, railroad ties, stockyards, and bridges. A winning blend of history and science, this is a fascinating and authoritative work for anyone interested in nature, the environment, and the making of the world as we know it."
About the author:
"Roland Ennos is a visiting professor of biological sciences at the University of Hull. He is the author of textbooks on plants, biomechanics, and statistics, and his popular book Trees, which was published by London's Natural History Museum. He is an enthusiast for natural history, archaeology, and early music, and lives with his partner and several hundred ferns near Hull, in East Yorkshire, England."
ISBN: 978-1-9821-1474-9