In 15 000 B.C. early humankind who had evolved in Africa tens of thousands of years before & spread out to populate the Earth arrived in Siberia during the Ice Age. Because so much water was locked up at that time in the great ice sheets several miles thick the levels of the worlds oceans were much lower than they are today & early humans were able to walk across the Bering Strait then a land bridge without getting their feet wet & enter the Americas. Then the Ice Age came to an end the Bering Strait refilled with water & humans in the Americas were cut off from humans elsewhere in the world. This division
- with two great populations on Earth each oblivious of the other
- continued until Christopher Columbus discovered America just before 1500 A.D. This is the fascinating subject of THE GREAT DIVIDE which compares & contrasts the development of humankind in the Old World & the New between 15 000 B.C. & 1500 A.D. This unprecedented comparison of early peoples means that when these factors are taken together they offer a uniquely revealing insight into what it means to be human. THE GREAT DIVIDE offers a masterly & totally original synthesis of archaeology anthropology geology meteorology cosmology & mythology to give a new shape
- & a new understanding
- to human history.