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REVIEW BY SIMON NORTON
Ten years ago, Year 3 primary school teachers in the UK, like myself, were handed a revised National Curriculum which included a brand-new Unit of Study on ‘Prehistoric Britain’. For many teachers of seven-year-olds, this was an area we had not covered before and that we had very little idea of. If only we’d all had a copy of Living in the Ice Age then.
Written by Paul Bahn and Elle Clifford, Living in the Ice Age adapts their 2022 book Everyday Life in the Ice Age into a wonderful introduction to the subject for children (and their teachers!). Over 67 pages, full of beautiful illustrations, timelines, maps, and photographs, the book asks many questions, inviting the reader to wonder about what people looked like, how our ancestors cared for their sick and disabled, and whether children played and had toys.
It is perhaps unsurprising that we first approach the subject of ‘The Stone Age’ bogged down with ideas of ‘cave men’, who hunt and lead primitive lives revolving solely around survival. But what about cave women, cave babies, cave ‘annoying little brothers’? What made life worth living? Where was the fun?
These are the questions that fascinated me. My own interest in our early human history was fuelled and sparked by wondering not so much about how people were different in the past, but ways in which we are the same. Now, as a member of the heritage team at Creswell Crags, I experience the thrill of inviting visitors to think about these aspects of life for the first time. If there were shoulders and children in the Ice Age, there were definitely piggybacks. If there were domesticated wolves, there were puppy barks and smells. If there were muddy puddles, it wasn’t Peppa Pig who first jumped in them!
Throughout the book, Clifford and Bahn continue to ask us to locate our modern, lived experience as the latest version of people who have evolved through time trying to work out what it means to be human. Preconceptions are dispelled and we are surprised to find that much of what we do today has only changed in terms of the materials we use and how we find them. A camping trip is a camping trip – just differentiated by the use of animal furs or Gore-Tex.
With a foreword by Chris Packham, Living in the Ice Age takes you on a journey through life in Ice Age Europe, and the things you’d need to know to survive. Not only does this lovely little book introduce the uninitiated, it also presents new questions for those more familiar with life in the Ice Age. Be prepared to be surprised by your answers.
Living in the Ice Age
Elle Clifford and Paul Bahn
Archaeopress, £14.99
ISBN 978-1803276670
