Ice Ages: Thier Social And Natural History, by Allan Mazur

This book is not nearly the sort of book that I thought it would be. My hope, in reading this slim volume, was that the author would be able to speak intelligently about the social history of those who lived in the ice ages, but the book, although it is a new one, spends far more time on the social history of scientists writing about ice ages and by extension climate matters. Not only is the book not about the sort of natural and social history I am most interested in, but the author seemed like he wrote not to discuss history at all but rather to insult those who have a high regard for the Bible. Given the author’s praise for the documentary hypothesis, it is evident that his knowledge of the Bible and its textual transmission is slight, or else he would not champion such an ahistorical view that undercuts his own credibility as a historian and shows that the author is considerably more interested in culture wars than he is in actually writing about history. This is a great shame, given that the work is already short enough as it is, and spends much of its limited space amiss, writing about things beyond the comprehension of the author.

This book is between 225 and 250 pages of material, and it begins with a short preface. The author then launches into a discussion of the biblical view of creation as he (mis)understands it (1). This is followed by a discussion of early modern Young Earth Creationism (2), as well as an altogether too glowing discussion of Darwin’s views (3). After that the author discusses the discovery of ice ages (4) as well as a discussion of one of the views as to the reason for ice ages in the orbit of the earth (5). This is followed by a discussion of the dating of ice age climates (6), as well as a discussion of the theories of carbon dioxide (7) and continental drift and its role in changing ocean currents (8) as explanation for the existence and timing of ice ages. This is followed by a discussion of human evolution, with more Bible bashing despite the widespread fraud that has always existed in the field (9) that would merit a more humble attitude towards the field and its supposed insights. After this comes a discussion of how hominins behaved (10) as well as that of life in the Paleolithic (11). The book then ends with a discussion of the extinction of large ice age mammals in many parts of the world (though not Africa) (12), the agrarian transformation that ushered in the neolithic (13), as well as a discussion of the rise of civilizations that took place afterwards and how these civilizations have tended to behave (14). The book then ends with references and an index.

Though the book is obviously far inferior to what it could have been in the hands of an author who was more interested in writing a history of the ice ages, and how the ice ages have been viewed throughout history–although this is not nearly as interesting as reading about what was going on in the ice ages themselves, to the extent that it is possible for us to know them at this remove–than in trying to score cheap political points and in scoring own goals because he demonstrates his own lack of knowledge in providing textual criticism of the Bible. Even so, this book is not without value. Sometimes the author manages to stay on topic and ends up writing about the role of continental drift in allowing for ice ages to exist as well as pointing out how it is that human beings (and animals) lived in the Paleolithic, as well as the agrarian transformation that took place at the transition to the neolithic. This worthwhile material, though, only takes about a third to a half of the book’s whole material, and while it saves the book from being a total waste, it is a disappointingly slight portion of a disappointing book in general.