Built on Bones

The city has killed most of your ancestors, and it's probably killing you, too - this book tells you why.
Imagine you are a hunter-gatherer some 15,000 years ago. You've got a choice - carry on foraging, or plant a few seeds and move to one of those new-fangled settlements down the valley. What you won't know is that urban life is short and riddled with dozens of new diseases; your children will be shorter and sicklier than you are, they'll be plagued with gum disease, and stand a decent chance of a violent death at the point of a spear.
Why would anyone choose this? This is one of the many intriguing questions tackled by Brenna Hassett in Built on Bones. Using research on skeletal remains from around the world, this book explores the history of humanity's experiment with the metropolis, and looks at why our ancestors chose city life, and why they have largely stuck to it. It explains the diseases, the deaths and the many other misadventures that we have unwittingly unleashed upon ourselves throughout the metropolitan past, and as the world becomes increasingly urbanised, what we can look forward to in the future.
Telling the tale of shifts in human growth and health that have occurred as we transitioned from a mobile to a largely settled species. Built on Bones offers an accessible insight into a critical but relatively unheralded aspect of the human story: our recent evolution.

Brenna Hassett is a biological anthropologist whose career has taken her around the globe, researching the past using the clues left behind in human remains. She has a PhD from University College London, where she is currently a researcher, and is also a Scientific Associate at the Natural History Museum, London. Brenna specialises in using clues from the human skeleton to understand how people lived and died in the past. Her research focuses on the evidence of health and growth locked into teeth to investigate how children grew (or didn't) across the world and across time.
Her first book- Built on Bones: 15,000 Years of Urban Life and Death, published by Bloomsbury - was well received by critics at the LA Times, the Guardian, and The Times, which named it one of the top 10 science books of the year. She followed this up with Growing Up Human: The Evolution of Childhood in 2022.
Brenna is a founding member of the TrowelBlazers Project, dedicated to increasing the visibility of women in the digging sciences.

Introduction: Nothing (but Flowers)
Chapter 1: Papa Was a Rolling Stone
Chapter 2: Feed Me (Seymour)
Chapter 3: What ' s New Pussycat?
Chapter 4: Revolution
Chapter 5: Power of Equality
Chapter 6: Oops Upside Your Head
Chapter 7: Under My Thumb
Chapter 8: War! What Is It Good For?
Chapter 9: Under Pressure
Chapter 10: Bring Out Your Dead
Chapter 11: Tainted Love
Chapter 12: Take This Job and Shove It
Chapter 13: Panic ...
Conclusion: Karma Police
Acknowledgements: Some of My Friends
Index