Europe: A Natural History by Tim Flannery

Europe: A Natural History Reviews

• 
  Warwick

  For anyone who needs a little perspective in these days of climatic instability, this book makes for a fascinating and, I found, a strangely comforting read. It details Europe's many evolutions from barren ice-fields to sweltering deserts – and the strange and wonderful creatures that adapted to live in them.
  
  It's incredibly revealing to approach natural history from this deep timeframe, starting way back when Europe was just ‘an island archipelago’ in the Tethys Sea. Who would have thought, for instance, that ‘Europe's oldest and most venerable mammals’ are the humble dormice, which arrived here way back in the Eocene? If you think dormice seem a bit boring, just be grateful it's them and not some of their contemporaries. Among the most alarming that I had never heard of were the entelodonts, popularly known as ‘hell pigs’, which had huge tusks and crocodilian jaws, and for some reason were ‘garishly ornamented with bony warts the size and shape of a human penis’. Yeah, the dormice don't seem that bad now, do they?
  
  To imagine what Europe must have looked and felt like in some of these periods is a wonderful thought experiment. During one hot period around six million years ago, for instance, the entire Mediterranean Sea dried out into
  
  

  a vast salt plain, more than 4000 metres below sea level at its lowest point, dotted with hypersaline lagoons. The Mediterranean's islands now towered as high as seven kilometres above the salty plain, where temperatures may have reached as high as 80° Celsius…

  
  
  Palm trees and water cypress, of the kind you can now see in Malaysia, once grew across Germany, where the forests were teeming with ‘the greatest venomous snake that has ever existed’ (the three-metre-long Laophis), along with giant tortoises the size of cars. In the Pleistocene, little straight-tusked elephants padded through the forests of Central Europe (as they now do in the Congo), water buffalo wandered the banks of the Rhine, and hippos frolicked in the Thames.
  
  Perhaps they will again. As Europe rapidly warms, it could be that one way of preserving wildlife that's critically endangered in Africa would be to reintroduce it in Europe; this might sound preposterous, but for Flannery it's almost a moral imperative. It is, he says, ‘unacceptable to ask the people of Africa, whose population may reach around four billion by 2100, to live alongside lions and elephants while Europeans refuse to do so’. Already, the reintroduction of species – some by chance, others as part of various ‘rewilding’ projects – has been remarkably successful. There are now more wolves in Europe than in the US, including Alaska.
  
  The final section, about the development of hominids in Europe, is full of new research – this field has obviously changed quite a lot even since I read Chris Stringer's
  The Origin of Our Species from 2011. It's particularly interesting to see that griphopiths – which represent the last common ancestor of humans and the other great apes – appeared in Europe a million years before they popped up elsewhere, which ‘suggests that our family most likely arose in Europe—and not, as has been long assumed, in Africa’.
  
  Since then, we've changed the face of the continent, and the rest of the world, almost beyond recognition. It's difficult to imagine what the next few hundred years will look like, let alone the next hundred million, except that whatever adaptations life makes to the inevitable climatic and geological upheavals are almost impossible for us to predict. Humans might not be there any more, at least not as a global civilisation – but what might take their place is anyone's guess. My money's on the dormice.
• 
  Marianne

  Europe: A Natural History is a non-fiction book by Australian scientist, explorer and conservationist, Tim Flannery. In his introduction he says he aims to “answer three great questions. How was Europe formed? How was its extraordinary history discovered? And why did Europe come to be so important in the world?”
  
  To achieve this, Flannery needs to give the reader a LOT of information. It is quickly apparent that he is an expert in this field, so distilling the wealth of his knowledge into a manageable 300 pages (excluding comprehensive Endnotes and Index) would have been no enviable task. And the information is accessible: relatively easy to follow for a novice, with abundant references should the reader's interest is piqued by a certain topic.
  
  This could all be terribly dry, dusty and maybe a bit boring, but this is Tim Flannery, so readers shouldn’t be surprised to find themselves laughing out loud fairly regularly: “Between 30 million and one million years ago painted frogs abounded in Europe, but then they became extinct. In 1940 biologists collected two adult frogs and two tadpoles in the vicinity of Lake Hula, in what is now Israel. To everyone’s astonishment, they were painted frogs. The larger of the two promptly ate its smaller companion…”
  
  If many of the creatures that Flannery writes about are incredibly bizarre, then no less odd and frequently quirky are some of the people who discover, investigate, study and write about all those rocks, fossils and life forms. For example, Hans Stehlin who “…had become something of a legend for his dogged pursuit of palaeontology, but it seems there was more to his dedication than scientific interest. According to museum folklore he had been thwarted in love, and to forget his misfortune had poured all his energy and passion into his work. Handsome, with a Freud-like beard and piercing eyes, it was also said that he had perfected the death stare. Whenever he required the skeleton of some exotic beast to compare with his fossil bones, he would visit Basel Zoo and stare at the appropriate animal, which would soon thereafter shuffle off its mortal coil.”
  
  As Flannery works through the answers to those questions he poses, he gives plenty of examples, but be prepared also for lots of migration, and not just of people and fauna, but also of flora and ice caps and land masses. And the pronunciation of some of some of those species and genus names may prove a challenge to the tongue and possibly the brain. This is an interesting, informative, often thought-provoking and ultimately hopeful read.
  
• 
  Calzean

  I felt some connection with this fascinating treatise into what made and makes Europe from a natural history, geographic, fauna and impact of man perspective. I read this book while in the Flinders Ranges where some of the rocks are 500 million years old so matched the timespan included in Flannery’s latest work. The author makes what could have been a very dry subject into an enjoyable romp full of unusual characters who put together the various pieces of the puzzles that deciphered what grew and lived when, what climatic conditions existed and how the landmass changed. A brilliant book full of unusual facts, written in a Bill Bryson style, this was an enjoyable read.
• 
  William Lawrence

  Fantastic read on natural history! The timelines are great (38,000 years ago: "Europe is colonised by humans from Africa forming a hybrid human- Neanderthal population.") Amazing facts on everything from the very first mammals of Europe to more recent humans. I particularly found a section interesting on how and when humans turned cows into milk factories. This book is a collection keeper. A time capsule work that tells THE story.
• 
  Clare O'Beara

  What a fun book!
  We emerge from a time machine to see islands where today there is a massive continent. Some parts of the land host dinosaurs, made smaller by islandisation, and leather-winged avians grown bigger for the same reason, like the moa; other parts are mountains composed of sea snail shells. We're looking at Albania and Romania, of the far past.
  The animals found here, including crocodiles and large turtles, went on to live in Australia and nearby islands for thousands more years, until people arrived on first one shore and then another where they left behind massive deposits of turtle bones. This is a clear sign that the lands were once joined and sheltered a common ancestor of each creature.
  
  As well as such unusual sights, we are shown the eccentric and moneyed early palaeontologists, what mad ideas they produced, where they were right. The Tethys Sea had been to the south, warm and full of ammonites, and the Bering Sea had been a cold neighbour to the north, full of coccolithophores laying down calcium to form limestone. The fossils thus stored were a source of endless fascination to the wealthy and new fields of study were emerging. The Turgei Strait kept Europe apart from Asia so at the time they shared few animal species. But volcanic islands rising above sea made stepping stones, and these were crossed.
  
  Something I hadn't previously heard was that rivers flowed from Africa to Europe at times, bringing fish and frogs. Another migration corridor (cold and dark much of the year) was a land bridge almost to the North Pole called the De Geer Corridor, from Europe to America. While Europe is not known to have sent species out from its islands at that time, says the author, some creatures used it on the route from Asia to America during the late age of dinosaurs. Amphibians are Europe's living fossils. Salamandrids evolved in Europe 90 million years ago and went to America as the dinosaurs died out, later to Asia. One nice tale is about the midwife toad on Majorca, first described from fossils then rediscovered in a valley where the survivors escaped introduced rats and dogs. With protection the species is being successfully reintroduced to other sites.
  
  We also learn of the Hula painted frog, thought extinct for a million years before being picked up in Israel in 1940. The species vanished again but now lives in a nature reserve. Up to then, the only painted frogs were in a museum. Relatives, the ancient tailed frog species, are in Africa, New Zealand and North America.
  
  That's by Page 42. I could go on producing these fascinating facts all day with this book to hand. I find 'Europe' well written and clear, to a keen naturalist, though not perhaps a school student, due to long scientific terms given to species or processes. The author does explain as he goes but a basic knowledge of natural sciences from geology to botany and zoology is assumed. For me the pages are full of interest. Chapter 7 looks at the meteor (or bolide) impact 66 million years ago and shocked quartz; the iridium layer was first identified in Italy's Apennines. Chapter 8 shows us a world of ferns, shouldered aside by tree seeds sprouting and un-nibbled by giant herbivores. Chapter 9 - due to a series of climate changes the European landmass was unifying and deep in old forest, just right for giant herbivores which invaded from North America. We meet Dr Jerry Hooker, whose career to date has yielded tiny fossils that have created much of our knowledge of the fauna of the lands. With invasions from all lands, the local fauna were devastated. And Asian animals went to America, including the horse, dog, camel.
  
  We are told that while the oldest known bat fossils are in Australia, no likely ancestors lived there. The origin of bats is thus a mystery even today. I'm glad there is something left to discover. Chapter 10 - the fossil pit at Messen, a carbon-dioxide belching lake at earlier times. And so on, a rich tapestry of places, people and fossil hunting. Even oil drillers in the Arctic Sea have contributed. We see extinctions caused by climate changes and caused by a mass invasion of species. As the author is Australian we consistently get the Aus - NZ viewpoint, such as the world's oldest songbirds having originated in Australia, which adds a rounded dimension to a book on Europe and adds even more fun facts. Including the tree species which thrived, moved and died out or replaced others. Then we learn of the largest hedgehog ever to exist, grabbing a fawn. The fun never stops.
  
  Oh, and everything you know about where apes and humanoids evolved and apes being superior to monkeys? Think again after reading the events of 17 -13 million years ago. Africa moving north allowed monkeys, which had evolved first in Asia and moved, to enter Europe and then isolated them for a time; by the time apes were found in Africa they had existed in Europe for a million years. Finds from history, from war years, from 2017, along with DNA analysis, CT scans and computer modelling are helping us to discover more, faster, than ever before. The bipedal footprints left on a Cretan beach are one recent find. A handy chart is at the end of that chapter. And then come the Ice Ages.
  
  I just had to mention that hybrids of brown bears and polar bears account for 8.8% of the brown bear genome. In this chapter, we're told Haldane's rule finds male hybrid mammals less fertile than female - certainly true of the mule. But where hybrids survive and are fertile, they bring new useful genes that assist species survival in changing times or new habitats. This is by way of introducing us to the concepts in an upcoming chapter on a Neanderthal-human family in Romania and the Denisovans, which spread to Asia, blending with humans.
  
  I'll just mention that the final section is called Europe's Silent Spring, which is not cheerful; but the book ends with rewilding and possibly re-creating ancient environments and beasts. Maybe the time machine user will see a mammoth-like beast on the steppe in the future.
  
  I did not get a map in my ARC but space is earmarked for one at the start of each section, which would help. As would some illustrations or photos, but these may be in the final version. 'Europe' is admirably suited to students of ecology, geology, botany, zoology, prehistory and history; the later chapters to geopolitics and conservation.
  
  Notes P329 - 356 in my e-ARC. As first initials were used instead of names I was unable to say how many women's names were present, apart from Flora and Europa. The author may be a palaeontologist, but I'm sure he'd agree with me that this book is not a dry recital of lists, and a good step in making science books more accessible to the populace would be, in my opinion, giving first names to scientists, which would also enable women to be seen and credited for their work.
  
  I downloaded an e-copy from Net Galley (but I'll have to get my own). This is an unbiased review.
• 
  Girl

  I received an e-book copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest opinion. Thank you!
  
  Tim Flannery's Europe describes the natural story of the European continent in its many senses. There is the geological history, the history of biological life - of both flora and fauna - over the millennia, even a brief history of the humankind's ventures into Europe over the course of human evolution. The final chapters describe the latest events in Europe's natural history, namely, the extinctions of subsequent animal species living in Europe. 
  
  The subject matter is very interesting, and there are many separate fragments of the book that I found very engaging and intriguing. However, as a whole, the book doesn't quite work for me. It might be partly the fault of the e-book, which had no maps or illustrations that could help the reader to better imagine the issues one is reading about. But I also thought that the book could be a little chaotic at times, and the progression from one topic to another wasn't always intuitive. In particular, I found the part of the book devoted to Neanderthal and early human presence in Europe lacking -- especially since I have recently read Karin Bojs's "My European Family", treating on the same subject in much greater detail. 
  
  And then, towards the end, in a discussion on wisent's near-extinction in Europe, Flannery writes that prior to World War One, wisents were protected by Polish kings, but given the hardships of WW One, people started to hunt wisents down for their meat. And I'm like ... but at that time Poland hadn't had kings since 1798? Like... wtf?  And maybe it's just shorthand for tsars and whatnot, or maybe it's just jumping over the entire nineteenth century, but-- if this is a mistake I caught because I'm familiar with this particular subject, there might be many more such omissions and shorthands that I didn't catch in this book. Well, hopefully there aren't, but now I can't be sure.
  
  TL;DR is that it's an interesting book and a good primer but you might want to check out the facts in independent sources if you want to share some tidbits with your friends.
  
• 
  Radiantflux

  42nd book for 2019.
  
  A remarkably ambitious environmental history of Europe covering a period of time when miniature dinosaurs lived on islands in Transylvania till the present day.
  
  A very enjoyable and well written book.
  
  5-stars.
• 
  Kamil Bryl

  Nigdy nie przypuszczałbym, że czytanie o ruchach płyt tektonicznych sprawi mi tyle frajdy. Świetnie napisana (i przetłumaczona!). Idealny balans między przyjemną i ambitną lekturą.
• 
  Kim

  A triumph of Natural History that spans from 100 million years ago all the way to a peek into the future. Any book that stuffs that span of time into 357 pages is going to be densely packed with fascinating information.
  It also has only a small section for images, so having google handy to look up unfamiliar beasts works quite well while reading this book.
  It's a very open-minded approach and introduced me to a whole new way of looking at conservation with a very long term view. Fascinating.
  Had to dedicate blocks of 20 mins of reading time (in multiple amounts) to it, because I found it took quite a bit of concentration to absorb the small amount of it that I feel I did.
  Quite an eye-opener and a really great read. Will be considering getting my own secondhand copy after returning this one to the library so I can have a more indepth look at the many pages of footnotes.
• 
  Kiril Valchev

  "Europe: A Natural History": Физико- и биогеографската история на Европа, през погледа на австралийския териолог и палеонтолог Тим Фланъри. От заключения между Азия, Африка и Сев. Америка европейски архипелаг преди 100 милиона години, до съвремието и близкото бъдеще, в което измирането, интродукцията, реинтродукцията и биотехнологиите ще продължат да прекрояват облика на континента, в чиято история, единственото сигурно нещо, винаги е била промяната.
  Много жива и увлекателна проза от Фланъри. Чудесна книга. Препоръчвам!
• 
  Jeff Bursey

  Lots of useful information presented in a breezy style at just the right pace. (A little too europe-lovin' for my taste, however.) Flannery had to juggle millions of years of data and many opinions, historical and present, and for the most part did that well. There are a couple of obvious errors, but they don't detract from the scientific information.
• 
  Leah

  From fossils to the future...
  
  Starting roughly 100 million years ago, Flannery sets out to tell the story of Europe – how it formed, the species that have lived, survived or become extinct in it, the rise of humanity, and the possible future impacts of our current galloping climate change. Along the way, he tells us of the many men and women who have contributed to uncovering this history or who have in some way affected it.
  
  There’s so much in this fascinating book that it’s hard to know how to summarise it in a few hundred words. It gives a panoramic view, bringing together and linking all the bits of natural history that are often covered separately, such as the formation of the continent, or current rewilding projects, or the origins of humanity. It’s surprisingly compact, considering its huge scope, and yet never feels superficial or rushed. And Flannery is a master of the art of converting scientific information into language easily understandable by the non-scientist.
  
  Flannery starts by explaining how the landmass formed and changed over time and how this impacted on the development and spread of species, or conversely on their isolation to single geographic areas. He explains the various climate changes over the aeons – why they happened and how they affected both environment and fauna. He describes the various land corridors that have existed at points between what are now separate continents, and the flow of species along these. I was reading a review copy without maps, but it indicated that maps will be available in the final version – I didn’t find the lack of them seriously affected my understanding of what he was describing, but they would undoubtedly be an enhancement.
  
  Personally I’m very human-centric, so I found the sections where he discussed the early hominids, the Neanderthals and the early humans particularly interesting. Flannery seems to have a good deal of admiration for the Neanderthals, seeing them not in any way as a lower form of species to humanity. In fact, he often gives the impression that in some ways he thinks they were superior in terms of intelligence and innovation, and that humanity’s main advantage, and the reason why we survived and they didn’t, is that humans can exist on foods other than meat, which enabled us to adapt better to changing environments. There’s a fascinating chapter on hybridisation between pale-skinned European Neanderthals and the early black African humans to create the first European humans. He doesn’t specifically say so, but I got the distinct feeling that he thinks the infusion of Neanderthal DNA was advantageous to the humans. Certainly he suspects that female Neanderthal mothers may have passed tips to their hybrid offspring on how to survive in the cold European climate, such as cave-dwelling. Apparently indigenous Europeans (and their descendants throughout the diaspora) still have a small but significant percentage of Neanderthal DNA.
  
  Once into the human phase of history, he shows how man began to impact on the environment and on other species, hunting some to extinction, destroying the habitats of some through farming, and domesticating some as farm animals or working animals. He talks of the European reliance on the cow as a source of food, and how that advantaged those with high lactose tolerance. He discusses the domestication of dogs, horses, cats, and explains how repeated selection and breeding of those with the most suitable temperaments for living domestically eventually changed them fundamentally from their wilder forebears. And he shows how human activities led to the introduction of species from (and to) other regions of the world, sometimes deliberately, sometimes accidentally, and often with unforeseen effects on indigenous species.
  
  As well as being a naturalist, Flannery is a renowned name in the field of climate change, so his final section looks to a future where change is happening so fast some species are unlikely to be able to adapt quickly enough to survive without human intervention. However, it’s not all bleak – the warming of Europe allows scope for reintroduction of species who emigrated during the ice ages, and Flannery sees this as a possible means of survival for some of the species who will be under threat in warmer parts of the world. He makes a strong case for Europe reintroducing some of the large species from Africa, including the predators, arguing that it’s unfair for Europeans to expect a turbulent, growing Africa to have to bear all the risks and costs of preserving these species if we are all to enjoy the benefits of their survival. He’s less clear about his support for the reintroduction of extinct species, possible now with genetic science, but suggests that society should form a view on this (presumably, though he doesn’t say so, before the mad scientists make the decisions for us). Thankfully, he draws the line at the idea of reintroducing the Neanderthal, although the survival of Neanderthal DNA makes this possible, concluding that the genetic manipulation of humans is immoral. I can only hope the wider scientific community agrees with him on that one.
  
  As always with these science-based books, I feel I’ve give only a superficial flavour of this one, concentrating on the bits that most interested me. But I found the whole thing fascinating, bringing together lots of disparate bits of things I’ve read about over the years into one coherent whole. Flannery writes clearly and entertainingly, including lots of anecdotes about the scientists and naturalists who’ve contributed to the sum of knowledge over the centuries, which helps to break up the more sciency stuff. And he’s meticulous about differentiating things that are known from those that are theorised but not yet proven, and from his own occasional speculations. An excellent read, informative and enjoyable – highly recommended!
  
  NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Atlantic Monthly Press.
  
  
  www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
• 
  Igor

  Це історія того, як змінювались географія, клімат, флора і фауна Європи в останні 70 мільйонів років (відколи на карті взагалі з'явилось щось схоже на Європу). Книжка цікава і гарно написана, і з неї я дізнався значно більше нового, ніж очікував. Наприклад, про весь період від вимирання динозаврів до появи первісних людей, який рідко десь згадують; про те, як Середземне море повністю висохло, а Чорне було озером; про різноманітність тварин у ті часи, коли сучасні люди вперше прийшли у Європу - тут бродили не тільки мамонти і шаблезубі тигри, але й носороги, бегемоти, гігантські версії оленів, ведмедів тощо. Усі вони, плюс наші родичі неандертальці, вимерли досить швидко після приходу людей (Фланнері має досить чітку позицію у дискусії про "причини вимирання мегафауни"). Автор палеонтолог, тому умовно сучасні теми - нові вимирання, вторгнення видів з інших континентів, потенційне повернення турів і мамонтів через гібридизацію та генну інженерію - він покр��ває менше, ніж хотілось би, але достатньо, щоб зацікавити на пошук інших джерел.
• 
  Carina Kaltenbach

  Very nice book. There's been phases where I was thinking "Does he really need to mention every single species ever lived in this epoch?" and at times the quick change of topic from one species to another was a bit confused and sometimes disappointing. Definitely would have liked it to be more in-depth and less broad. Oh, and more pictures. Definitely more pictures. But overall, I enjoyed reading this book and I've learned a lot, so definitely recommend if you're interested in paleontology and natural history.
• 
  Angelique Simonsen

  Fascinating. Very well researched with some very current findings. Amazing amounts of changes
• 
  Rachel

  A wonderful book that reignited my interest in a fascinating subject area
• 
  Darrin

  As a broad overview of the natural history of a continent, this book is excellent. I read a lot of books similar to this or books that touch on some aspect of the geology of Europe or palaeontological discoveries in Europe but I have learned only bits and pieces along the way.
  
  My favorite parts are the early beginnings of Europe as an archipelago of islands that were off and on connected with each other or off and on connected with various bits of other land masses that later became continents. Did you know there were small-sized, island-living versions of many common dinosaurs? I did not know this and these discoveries were made many years ago.
  
  I also liked Flannery's discussion of current efforts to re-wild parts of Europe and bring back some of the larger land mammals that are either threatened or are extinct on the continent. Again, much of this I was unaware of and I found it an interesting discussion of what is currently taking place.
  
  My only quibble is that there are times that I feel some of Flannery's fluffing it up a little bit by being too one-sided in his opinions about various theories. I can't cite specific examples because I returned the book to the library and did not note the pages or the specific references...
  
  Regardless of that, it is still a well-written book and I recommend to anyone who has an interest in natural history and the sciences.
• 
  Chavdar

  Amazing book! Scientific, entertaining and easy to read and understand by anyone. It's the perfect mix of geology, palaeontology and biology for me. Loved it!
  Thanks, Josef, for the book!
• 
  Martin Blake

  I think this is the first time I've ever given a book 5 stars, but this one is worth it. It crams 100 million years of evolution and geological change into a few hundred pages, but still makes you feel that it's been quite a journey. I didn't realise that Europe was a fragmented collection of islands and archipelagos until a few tens of millions of years ago, that sea levels dropped so far at times that a land bridge formed between Europe and North America, and as for the Messinian salinity crisis ... Nor did I know that hyenas were common in Europe until a few thousand years ago, or that the golden jackal is currently sweeping across the continent. At the end there's a brief but thought-provoking discussion of rewilding to bring it up to the present day.
  My only criticism is that a bibiography would have been handy, but there are some challenging messages in here. I couldn't put it down.
• 
  Sarah

  Easy and entertaining read and lots of interesting stuff. I hadn't heard the name for the european bison - wisent - before but I won't forget it now. I'm still struggling to grasp the different sweeps of time, with plate tectonics, ancient animal races, ice ages and recent history. I thought for a while that more and better timelines might help but I've seen lots of timelines before and it never seems to sink in so hopefully this narrative will leave a more lasting trace. And I love the suggestion we might rewild Europe not just with bears and wolves, but with wisent, lions and forest elephant. We have beavers coming to a wildlife trust enclosure in Derbyshire this year - perhaps only the start!
• 
  Imogen

  Very interesting trip through history, from almost the year dot. Written in an engaging and informal style, it is very readable. Flannery covers so much material that it is impossible to believe it is without errors, and when covering topics that fall within my expertise I did find some minor problems. Read it with a grain of salt, but enjoy heading into this time machine.
• 
  Anneliese Tirry

  In dit geweldige boek over de eerste 100 miljoen jaar van ons continent stelt de auteur 3 vragen:
  - How was Europe formed?
  - How was this extraordinary history discovered?
  - Why did Europe come to be so important in the world?
  En wat een boeiende antwoorden volgen hierop. Beginnend bij de "tropische archipel", langs de vorming van het continent, door de ijstijden, in het gezelschap van de eerste mensachtigen en zo verder langs de meer nabije geschiedenis en eindigend in 2.300 AD vertelt Tim Flannery ons over de boeiende evolutie van ons werelddeel, met een kleine hoopvolle blik naar de toekomst. Dat gaat zowel over de geologische verschuivingen van continenten en gesteenten (wisten jullie dat de top van de Matterhorn Afrikaans is?), als over de wel immense, zij het traag vorderende, klimaatswisselingen. Dat gaat over al die soorten dieren die er waren in al die miljoenen jaren, oervormen van dieren die er nog zijn, vormen die al lang niet meer bestaan, dieren die uit kwaadaardige sprookjes lijken weggelopen, gigantische dieren, zeer kleine uitgaven van dieren die wij net als zeer groot kennen, (geloof me, Google is je vriend wanneer je dit boek leest), ach, wat heb ik mijn wel zeer beperkt geheugen vaak verfoeid, waarom onthou ik dit alles niet tot in de eeuwigheid? En dit boek gaat over de mensen die dit verleden ontdekten, vaak toevallig, vaak zijn het idealisten of zonderlingen of extremisten.
  Het feit dat wij allen zo verschillend zijn, ik ben (was) donker van haar, maar ik heb o.a. een rosse dochter, een erg blonde nicht, of het feit dat wij zoveel verschillende langschappen hebben, dat Europa zo heterogeen is, heeft de maken met het feit dat wij op een kruispunt liggen, neen, het kruispunt zijn, voor volkeren, dierensoorten, van verschuivende continenten.
  Dit is een fantastisch boek over onze fantastische wereld, helder geschreven, soms ook gewoon grappig. Ook wordt er verwezen naar de niet altijd even fraaie rol van de mens, de opkomst van de mens valt vaak samen met het wegvallen van dierensoorten, een enkele keer wordt de vergelijking gemaakt tussen wat toen een snelle klimaatsverandering was (in geologische termen) en dat het nu 30 keer sneller gaat.
  Een geweldig boek dus, en bij deze mens een geweldig slecht geheugen!
• 
  Alan Bevan

  This is an extraordinary book. It provides a compelling view of Europe's history from the perspective of a time scale that is difficult to comprehend and yet deeply significant. Whilst perhaps not overtly setting out to do so, it forces a recognition that our lives are just one tiny blink in the extraordinary history of our planet.
  The tale of geological change, climatic change, mega fauna, extinctions, migration and extermination is heady stuff indeed.
  I was particularly struck to read of the precision of science in being able to determine the inbred origin of a Neanderthal whose remains were uncovered - mother a half sister etc. It was fascinating to learn that Neanderthals were light skinned, blue eyed, red haired and probably very intelligent. It was also fascinating to learn that those of us with European origins have hybrid origins with the Neanderthal and I think I am right in concluding our whiteness is due to our Neanderthal DNA - how ironic for the white supremeists! And how challenging from a theological perspective to recognise that there was a whole species of human that became extinct other than for the hybrid DNA in we Europeans. How does that concept fit with notions about special creation or a god's love for mankind?
  But I digress. This is one of the most thought provoking and engaging books I have read for some time. Highly recommended.
• 
  Richard Subber

  Probably this is more than you ever wanted to know about the natural history of Europe.
  If you’re a big fan of the midwife toad, Europe: A Natural History is for you.
  In fact, if you’ve always been intrigued by the story of the European aurochs (prehistoric Eurasian ox), Flannery is a must-read.
  I am not demeaning the book. It is easy enough to read, although densely packed with facts about species, ecosystems, tectonic plates, taxonomy, prehistoric climates, and such.
  The tale of the history of humans in Europe is in the book, with probably a reasonable (limited) emphasis that fairly illuminates Flannery’s balanced effort to describe the environmental, flora, flora, and hominid factors that have interacted in the history of the continent.
  It has dinosaurs, too.
  Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
  
  www.richardsubber.com
• 
  Elle Maruska

  This was a fascinating, accessible, and quick read on the natural history of Europe. The writing is inviting and even humorous at times and the subject is handled with just enough detail. The discussion of re-wilding Europe, what constitutes a native species, and how hybridization fits in to the natural history of the continent were all super interesting and thought-provoking
• 
  Sarah - All The Book Blog Names Are Taken

  Loved most of the book except the last few chapters that deal with the modern world because I suffer from the disorder that makes me find our current state of affairs dreadfully boring when thinking about how the world looked millions of years ago with dinosaurs stomping about.
  
  Review to come.
• 
  Valerie

  What an amazing overview of the shifting nature of Europe! I loved the discussion of hybridization and its place in evolution and learning about Nopcsa and discussions of migration events. Will certainly reread this.