A nonfiction book about archaeology told in a funny, easily accessible style. Built on Bones focuses on two major turning points in prehistory: the Neolithic Revolution (the invention of farming, the shift from nomadic hunter-gathering to settled villages with domesticated plants and animals) and the Urban Revolution (the development of cities), and how these changes affected human lives and health. Hassett is a bioarchaeologist - one whose speciality is analyzing human bones – so much of her data is focused on that, but she pulls in all sorts of threads to recreate the complicated world of the past.

Hassett's vision of prehistoric life is refreshingly balanced. She portrays the pre-Neolithic world as neither brutish and half-starved, from which we were only rescued by progress and technology, nor as an idyllic Eden that stress and pollution has forever destroyed. She's managed to write a book that can serve as an introduction to this historical period and archaeological techniques while also including some of the latest discoveries, which is just incredibly impressive. She also has a great sense of humor; you've got to love a science book that can throw in references to Monty Python, selfie duckface, and the sexual escapades of a typical archaeology dig.

All around, I can't recommend Built on Bones enough. If you have any remote interest in early history, you should absolutely pick up this book.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2597803587

I love reading about this stuff--what is underneath the ground buried from prior civilizations by time, floods and or erosion. The news is full of stories of workmen uncovering a lost tunnel, room, or burial place when excavating a site or demolishing a building. Hassett explains how all this happens and what under girds our buildings and society. Highly recommended---I have come across no other book like it.

Book received from NetGalley.

I ended up really enjoying this book, but after the first chapter, I had to not consider it as a history book but a sociology one. While it does go into some history of our living in what eventually became cities, it focuses more on why people did it, how living in a city changed our life spans, what discovering agriculture meant to the early ancestors and how it made city living possible while occasionally poking fun at the "paleo" culture we have today. I did learn a few things about how cities evolved and the people who lived in them and want a copy for my own research shelves. I'm not sure this book is for everyone.

This was a fascinating look at how humans have evolved from our ancient ancestors to the future of our distant ancestors. All of human kinds history can be found in our bones. This book is simple and understand and should be a must read for those interested in science. I liked it so much I requested my library to purchase it and they did!

I loved this book. Brenna Hassett tells the reader about urbanization of the world using the evidence from bone remains to build the story. On its own, the story is fascinating, but when you add in her incredible sense of humor, this book is impossible to put down. It is not often that I recommend that the reader read the footnotes, but in this case it’s a must. I’m sure I annoyed my wife by reading the footnotes out loud to her. While this book is about science, it is written in plain language and no science background is necessary to enjoy the book. This is one of the best science books I’ve read recently.

This is a great book to a general audience interested in archaeology and anthropology. It covers a lot of material in a way that is accessible and humorous.

Brenna Hassett is a bioarchaeologist. If you're like me, and have no idea what that is, it means she studies human bones and remains like teeth found in archaeological sites, looking for clues to understand more about human existence and how it's evolved through the ages.

The book focuses especially on cities, or our earliest iterations of urban developments. Hassett asks at the beginning:

If cities are so great, why are they full of things that kill us? Urban life serves up a terrifying cocktail of the most dangerous things known to our species - disease, inequality and, of course, other people. It's not unreasonable to ask: why have we made cities this way?

This should hook you in, because it's absolutely a valid question that I think has crossed the mind of anyone who's been crammed on an overfull subway car at rush hour, stopped in the tunnel without even a quiver of forward momentum, silently pleading with whatever god you believe in to get you home to an overpriced outer-borough apartment that eats up well over 50% of your income where you can eat an off-brand microwave dinner and fall asleep to the sound of your neighbor's TV through paper-thin walls while some breed of insect takes over your apartment in the night, regardless of your cleaning aptitude. Why do we do it? Why does anyone put themselves through an existence like this?

... If we look at the lives and deaths of people through all the different experimental stages of urban life, we can start to see some very interesting patterns in these urban pioneers...It's through the skeletal remains of the city dwellers of the past that the question this book asks can be answered, and it matters to everyone alive today: why have cities made us this way?

Factors she examines include our domestication and use of animals, treatment of women and children, diet and nutrition habits and patterns, and susceptibility to illnesses.

The absolute highlight of the book is Hassett's excellent sense of humor, which she weaves to great effect throughout her scientific observations and analyses. Introducing a chapter on the importance of major historical illnesses to her work and research: "Like many bioarchaeologists, I have a fondness for plagues."
So she's always able to catch your attention and draw it into whatever subject she's using to make her case. At the same time, she's so intelligently able to distill the bones of her work into helpful explanations for the lay reader. From the same example of why bioarchaeology needs a good plague every now and then:
"Calamities such as plague that knock everyone into the grave with one indiscriminate sweep are one of the few chances bioarchaeologists have to overcome something known as the Osteological Paradox, a term coined by researcher James Wood and colleagues to cover the very awkward point that, in studying past lives, the evidence bioarchaeologists actually have to go on are past deaths. Without access to modern medical care, the greatest potential for mortality comes in old age and in infancy and early childhood. Death is less of a risk for adolescents and reproductive-age adults, until something comes along to level those odds."

Interesting. That wouldn't ever really have occurred to me. She also has a witty way to condense some of the anthropological quirks of modern life: "Humans have manipulated thousands of years of animal evolution to make a tastier chicken, a milkier cow and a wolf you can let play with your children."
The subject matter did have the potential for dryness without her frequent tongue-in-cheek observations and hilarious footnotes. Her writing is very much geared to the layperson who just happens to be interested in those questions of why we gravitate to cities and what they do to us, so there's no prior insider knowledge of her scientific field necessary.

All the same, I did lose interest here and there. She's an unbelievably gifted writer and her subject is undeniably interesting, but I felt the cases explored sometimes strayed from the original questions I wanted answers to. Although I learned a lot, I think far more from this book than I did in a Physical Anthropology course in college, my attention wandered and I didn't think that the questions were ever satisfactorily answered.

She admits to about as much herself. That doesn't mean the attempt to answer them isn't both educational and wildly entertaining. As she puts it: "I've suggested that history is a liar and bioarchaeology a more devoted servant of the truth, but the reality is that we can only investigate what we can find."

But what she has found, and especially coupled with her unique, self-deprecating, completely charming narrative voice makes for an overall fascinating read.

I just could not get into this book. It was not what I expected. I found my attention easily diverted while trying to read this book.

Hassett, an archaeologist, looks at the way our evolution from hunter gatherers to farmers to urban dwellers has changed us, physically. Using human bones, from the some of the oldest civilizations on earth, to the industrial revolution, she shows how plagues, wars, diet and physical activity have changed us. This is a fascinating look at our evolution as human beings that will appeal to both professionals and laymen