Spectator Books

In this week's Book Club podcast my guest is the palaeoarchaeologist Paul Pettitt - whose new book Homo Sapiens Rediscovered explains how new scientific techniques have transformed the way we understand the deep past. He described to me the long and hazardous journey of H. Sap out of Africa - and along the way explains what's so good about mammoths, how cutting-edge cognitive science explains Paleolithic art, why cavemen didn't live in caves... and why you can draw a line from prehistoric Lascaux to Tony the Tiger.