Book Review | Mankind: Work provides well-rounded synopsis of human history



In Mankind: The Story of Us All, Pamela D. Toler introduces the connections that led to our domination of the planet. It’s a vast task that she handles well.

A companion book to the History cable series Mankind, the book stands on its own. Too many history books are dominated by Western culture. Mankind covers world culture.

Toler admits that even scientists are still in conflict about some basic facts:


The first chapter, “Seeds of Change,” covers early man, the creation of tools and the development of hunting. The ice age arrives and humanity retreats into caves to survive — and to record its existence.

Toler writes: “Paintings and carvings created by ice-age human give us our only clues about how these ancestors of ours thought. They are also the first examples we have of humans thinking symbolically. Symbolism is the basis of language and every other form of culture.”

Humanity’s movement is bound with nature. The weather changes; the ice recedes. People move on, pushing against other groups who also survived. Kingdoms rise, conflicts ensue, slaughter happens.

“The life of Genghis Khan, born Temujin, is an example of survival of the fittest in human form —p p p p p one exceptional person triumphing against hostile nature and human forces to move mankind into a new age. The Earth has become hotter. Khan responds by taking his people and livestock into greener pastures to the east. Soon his realm — the Mongol Empire — includes every acre and person from China to the Mediterranean Sea.”

There’s more to Mankind, however, than just chapters on war and power struggles.

Innovations such as the printing press change the balance of power as now books can be read by all.

Christopher Columbus lands on Hispaniola in the search for a passage to China — and inadvertently leaves behind a deadly disease, smallpox, which will kill more than a third of the native population.

Science flourished in the ninth century: “Scholars in Baghdad could measure the Earth using astronomical readings with a degree of accuracy unsurpassed until the 20th century.”

Trade allows the plague to come from China along the trade routes and kills millions in Europe, changing the power structure of the medieval period.

Everything is connected.