2024/159: A Short History of Humanity: How Migration Made Us Who We Are — Johannes Krause / Thomas Trappe (translated by Caroline Waight)

If you look at the settlement of Europe as the drama it so often was, then at least 70 percent of its cast are descended from the antiheroes: the migrants who arrived on the continent and subjugated it 8,000 and 5,000 years ago. [loc. 2165]

An informative, accessible and fascinating book about archaeogenetics and what the study of ancient humans' DNA can tell us about patterns of migration. It's Eurocentric, but that allows the authors -- Johannes Krause, director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, and journalist Thomas Trappe -- to focus on the origins of present-day Europeans, and the waves of migration that have swept over the continent from east to west.

There's a thorough examination of the role of plague in human history, from its effect on migration (easier to migrate into an area where most of the population has died) to the lingering fear of migrants bearing disease. I hadn't known that there was a 'first wave' of plague, non-bubonic and probably transmitted to humans by Asian horses, in the Mesolithic: that variant died out just as bubonic plague was evolving. Nor did I realise that after regular outbreaks of plague in the early medieval period (including the Plague of Justinian), the disease went dormant -- at least in Europe -- for centuries before the lethal epidemic of the mid-fourteenth century. The reason is unknown, but Krause hypothesises that earlier outbreaks, as well as cultural and social changes, had reduced population density to a level which precluded mass outbreaks. (He also points out that 50% of medieval plague infections were non-lethal, and conferred lifelong immunity on survivors.)

Also fascinating was the discussion of non-Homo Sapiens DNA inheritance: in sub-Saharan Africa there are no traces of Neanderthal DNA, whereas it's 2.5% in Europeans. Indigenous peoples of Australia and Papua New Guinea are about 7% descended from Neanderthals and Denisovans. It's not only different human species that can be detected in DNA: Southern Europeans, and especially Sardinians, have less genetic indication of incoming migration than in other areas.

There are also intriguing insights into the origins of syphilis (not a souvenir brought back to Europe by Columbus' crew) and the spread of tuberculosis and leprosy. And despite the violence and disease historically introduced by waves of migrants, Krause is at pains to stress that 'human beings are born travelers; we are made to wander.' He argues against the ways in which genetic evidence has been used to fuel ethnic conflicts, and explains how genetic differences are reducing as humans become ever more mobile. And he stresses that the issues facing the world today 'are constants in human history: deadly pandemics and constant migration'.

A really good read: full of science, but with a distinctly humanist slant and a refreshing refusal to interpret prehistory through the lens of the present.

2024/158: Signal to Noise — Silvia Moreno-Garcia

He lifted the needle. There was the faint scratch against the vinyl and then the song began to play.
“Okay, now we hold hands and dance around it,” Meche said.
“Really,” Sebastian replied dryly.
“Yes. That’s what witches do. They dance around the fire. Only we don’t have a fire, so we’ll dance around the record player.” [loc. 983]

It's 2009, and IT professional Meche is returning to Mexico City for the first time in twenty years, to attend her father's funeral. It's 1988, and Meche is 15, hanging out with literature-mad Sebastian and young-for-her-age Daniela, and discovering that the three of them can do magic. Alternating between the two timelines, Signal to Noise is the story of what went wrong between Meche and Sebastian, Meche and her parents, Meche and herself.

This was Moreno-Garcia's first novel, and features some predictable plot elements and occasional clunky sentences. We never get an explanation of the magic, or why only some records (physical records! those round things!) work as magical foci. And I'd have liked more about the grandmother's history, and her sacrifice. But I liked the atmosphere of a Mexico City high school; the way that music twines through the story; the relationship between Meche and Sebastian, and the uncomfortable dynamics of Meche's family; the way that the past must be faced before it can be left behind.

I bought this in September 2020, and finally read it as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.

2024/157: The House of the Stag — Kage Baker

“But this is all absurd!”
“Isn’t it? I lie to survive, because people fear and respect a black mask more than an honest face. Life became much simpler once I understood that.” [p. 288]

This has been on my wishlist for ages, and was suddenly, briefly affordable...

Gard grows up in a close-knit family among a tribe of gentle forest dwellers, the Yendri. He's bigger and stronger than the other boys, and he doesn't believe in the divinity of the newly-arrived prophet. Then come the Riders, who enslave the Yendri: the prophet Beloved walks through walls, tending to the wounded and despairing, but Gard would rather fight back in more physical ways. He ends up exiled, and trying to climb the mountains beyond which lies a fabled promised land ... and finds himself, crippled by frostbite, prisoner and slave to a coven of immortal mages who employ hordes of demons to keep their Citadel running. Gard attracts the eye of the ambitious Lady Pirihine, Narcissus of the Void: he also befriends a number of demons, including the lovely, deadly Balnshik. Trained as a gladiator and then as a mage, Gard learns a great deal about the world and about his own nature. Then the Citadel is destroyed, and Gard turns to acting ... but his ultimate aim is to become a Dark Lord, with his own mountain stronghold and (obviously) werewolf valet.

Meanwhile the Yendri are flourishing under the care of a young woman known as the Saint, who is pure and compassionate and sensible. I am not comfortable with the circumstances of her first meeting with the Master of the Mountain... But on the whole (and despite slavery and genocide and rape and murder and some deeply unpleasant scenes) this is a cheering and gently humorous novel. It doesn't shy from the horrors of the world, but neither does it linger on them. Instead, it shows us people making the best of their situations: it shows us kindness and forgiveness, loyalty and just deserts, and a multitude of magics, from theatre to magecraft to the inner lives of demons. There were moments when I wanted to look away -- but more moments where I smiled, or laughed aloud, or reread a conversation just to relish Baker's humour. I wish she'd lived longer and written more.

I realised about halfway through that this was actually a prequel to The Anvil of the World, which I read nearly 20 years ago and now want to reread!

2024/156: Where the Dead Wait — Ally Wilkes

When animals were slaughtered -- butchered correctly -- they’d have the blood drained. This was the stink of something still fat with blood. Being cooked hastily, for starving men. Something was in the room with them. [p. 127]

I'd found All the White Spaces compelling and well-written, so was keen to read Wilkes' second novel. Her prose is still resonant and evocative, but I didn't enjoy Where the Dead Wait as much: partly, I think, because I didn't find the protagonist (William 'Eat-Em-Fresh' Day) as sympathetic as Jonathan in the previous book, and partly because I found the cannibalism thoroughly unpleasant.

There's a lot more than cannibalism to this novel of 19th-century Arctic exploration. The focal character is William Day, disgraced survivor of a polar expedition, who returns to the Arctic thirteen years later because his second-in-command, Jesse Stevens, has gone missing in the same area. Those members of the original expedition who made it home had resorted to 'the last desperate resource' -- a euphemism for cannibalism -- but Day knows, though has not revealed, that Stevens' nature held darker secrets. Day, who was in inadmissable and unrequited love with Stevens, is accompanied on the rescue mission by old crew mates and a gang of whalers who survived a shipwreck but were changed by it, and by two especially unwelcome passengers: Stevens' wife, a medium, and Avery, a newspaper reporter. Three unwelcome passengers, perhaps: for whenever Day looks into a mirror, or catches a glimpse of a reflection, Stevens is there.

The gradual revelation of the earlier expedition's fate, told in parallel with the second voyage, is excellently paced. Day's slow disintegration has an inevitability as horrific as the events that haunt him. The characters are intriguing (especially Arctic Highlander Qila, and Olive Stevens the medium) and the tension between them palpable. Elements of colonialism ('the expedition’s first acts had been to claim the land around them, as if theirs to do so'); echoes of Heart of Darkness and The Terror. But I now know much more than I wanted to know about cannibalism and the preparation and cooking of human flesh.

They’d taken the good cuts first. And then, with almost unimaginable hubris, they’d buried what was left. [p. 173]