It is perhaps not said enough that, while leading a research group comes with a lot of responsibility and stress, it also comes with immense benefits. Chief among those is the ability to supervise gifted students and postdoctoral researchers from a variety of backgrounds. It has been an immense privilege to interact with the talented and driven individuals who have already, in some way, passed through my lab: Victor Lery Caetano Andrade, Ayushi Nayak, Maddy Bleasdale, Rebecca Jenner Hamilton, Bob Patalano, Max Findley, Jillian Swift, Anneke Janzen, Alicia Ventresca-Miller, Noel Amano, Asier García-Escárazaga, Eleftheria Orfanou, Oshan Wedage, Michael Ziegler, Phoebe Heddell-Stevens, Patxi Perez Ramallo, Neha Dhavale, Celeste Samec, Verónica Zuccarelli, Xueye Wang, Courtney Culley, Óscar Ricardo Solís Torres, Letícia Morgana Muller, Giulia Riccomi, and Clara Boulanger. I have learned an immense deal from all of you, and it has been a privilege to, in some small way, be involved in all of your exciting research, which I am sure will be setting agendas in archeology and paleoecology, including within the tropics, for many years to come. As well as many of the individuals listed above, I am also grateful to a number of people who have, at various points in my career, forced me to put work to one side and (usually) talk about something else for a change. Thank you especially to Tom Boulton, Jonny Rollings, Max Mewes, Christoph Brückner, Christoph Klose, Gerd Gleixner, Florian Ott, Rob Spengler, Andrea Kay, Julien Louys, Gilbert Price, Katerina Douka, Tom Higham, Brian Stewart, Sam Challis, Luíseach Nic Eoin, Rachel King, Mark McGranaghan, Ed Peveler, Abi Tomkins, Olly Beeley, Adam Besant, Vaughan Edmonds, Dan McArthur, Andy Baldock, Alison Crowther, Cosimo Posth, Mathew Stewart, Huw Groucutt, and Eleanor Scerri for the good company and for the beer.
This book has been an immense pleasure to write, though it has not been all plain sailing. I am incredibly grateful to my editors, especially Connor Brown in the United Kingdom and Eric Henney in the United States, for their enthusiasm and patience in crafting this into a final product that was hopefully readable enough for those of you that kindly picked it up! I am also indebted to copy editors Annie Lee and Jennifer Kelland for their detailed, patient reading of the manuscript. Thank you also to the arts team at Viking, Penguin Random House in the United Kingdom for turning some of my scribbles and ramblings into effective artwork that brings the story of tropical forests to life. The same goes to those fantastic creators of the “paleoart” used in different parts of the book: Mark Klinger for his fantastic drawing of Juramaia sinenesis, Jay Matternes for his Ardipithecus ramidus picture, Velizar Simeonovski for his elephant bird reconstruction, and the other artists whose work I have credited in these pages. Without these images, it would have been that bit harder to describe the long journey of tropical forests and their inhabitants. I would, of course, not have even got anywhere near the editing or illustration stage if it were not for my incredible agents, Joanna Swainson and Thérèse Coen, at Hardman & Swainson. Thank you for having faith in this project, for reading every page, and for negotiating contracts and payments. A first-time author of a trade book could not have asked for a better experience. Thank you also to the “unseen editors,” particularly Noel Amano, Max Findley, and Rebecca Hamilton, who took the time out to provide extraordinarily helpful comments on a number of different parts of the book (and a number of different times!).
The research discussed in this book would also not have been possible without the generous funding and support I have received from various agencies throughout my career so far. They include the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford, St Hugh’s College at the University of Oxford, the Clarendon Fund, the Santander Foundation, the Natural Environmental Research Council, the Boise Fund at the University of Oxford, the PAGES and Society for African Archeologists, the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, the Beutenburg Campus, the National Geographic Society, and the European Research Council. I am also particularly grateful to the Max Planck Society for providing the funding for my position, my laboratory equipment, and my research initiatives throughout the tropics. Research funding, particularly for the social sciences and humanities, is often some of the first to be cut in the face of economic crises, growing nationalism, and, most recently, pandemics. The European Research Council has prominently recently faced cuts to its budget, for example. While there are undoubtedly many things more worthy of financial support in trying times, it is this funding that enables us to explore questions like those investigated in this book. Without it, none of it could have happened. I am also fully conscious of the fact that many of the same historical processes and inequalities explored in Chapters 10 and 11 have, ultimately, resulted in my having a privileged platform on which to produce this work. There is an urgent need to further support research initiatives in the tropics that are led and driven by talented researchers from the tropics, a number of whom we have heard from in these pages.
Finally, beyond mentors, colleagues, friends, and funding, it is ultimately family that allows a book like this to be written. And I have one of the most supportive that I know. My parents, Julia and Neil, provided the trips to museums, archeological sites, and nature reserves that sparked off my interest in the human past. My brother, Tom, put up with it. Only with their financial and loving support could I have taken the first step on the academic ladder, studying archeology and anthropology at university. Every book that I asked for, no matter how boring it sounded, they bought. My grandmothers, Kay and Margaret, must also take credit here, and I get the feeling that they are still watching over me as I travel through my own “jungles.” Kindness makes a huge difference in this life, and I have never seen such kindness in a person as I have in both of them. I hope that, in some small way, I carry that irrepressible desire to help people forward. In my aunty, Ali, I also have one of the most caring, supportive, and loving relatives possible. Nowadays, it is my partner, Jana, and our children, Rhys, Ida, and Livia, that are the core foundations of my tropical endeavors. They welcome the colleagues and friends who arrive on our doorstep from all over the world (though they do often get the benefits of good food!). They tolerate the time I spend away on fieldwork in the tropics and at conferences with other forest enthusiasts. They also let me find the time to write. As Livia says, “In diesem Haus leben Chaos und Liebe” (in this house live chaos and love). No truer words were ever spoken. Thank you for everything and all my love to you all. Thank you also to a wonderful acting “mother-in-law,” Bettina Ilgner, whose heart has no bounds and whose care for her family gets them through the tough, as well as the good, times more than she will ever know.
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Photo by Hans-Georg Sell, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
PATRICK ROBERTS is a W2 research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. He is a National Geographic Explorer and has received numerous awards for his research on human evolution, including a €1.5 million European Research Council Starting Grant. He lives in Jena, Germany.
SOURCES AND NOTES
PREFACE
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CHAPTER 1: INTO THE LIGHT—THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT
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