So as much as this book had interesting things to say and really good points to make, I just could not get over the fact that it spent such an inordinate and grueling amount of time speculating about the possible magical practices of cultures with no written record before straight up skimming over the magical practices of cultures that had written records in abundance. Other readers may feel differently, but...the listing off of magical practices with a long and concrete history was 100% what I was reading this book for. So to get a whole info-dump of archaeological findings that we're only slightly sure of the exact meaning of, and only an overview of things that did in fact have records was a very, very strange choice to me, and made this book something of a chore to read.

There are some really interesting things in here, like I said, (the way people treated statues through the ages alone was fascinating) but if you're not interested in speculations on Mesolithic cultures this book is probably not for you.