Chapter 12: Alone in a Crowded Universe
Everything that you might want to know about woodpeckers in general, and about each particular species of them, is contained in a book by Lester L. Short, Woodpeckers of the World (Delaware Museum of Natural History, Greenville, Delaware, 1982). Pioneering calculations arguing for the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life were carried out by I. S. Shklovskii and Carl Sagan, Intelligent Life in the Universe (Holden-Day, San Francisco, 1966).
Chapter 13: The Last First Contacts
Bob Connolly's and Robin Anderson's book First Contact (Viking Penguin, New York, 1987) describes first contact in the New Guinea highlands through the eyes of both the whites and the New Guineans who met there. The quotation on page 207 is taken from their book. Other gripping accounts of first contacts and of pre-contact conditions include Don Richardon's Peace Child (Regal Books, Ventura, 1974) for the Sawi people of southwest New Guinea, and Napoleon A. Chagnon's Yanomamo, The Fierce People, 3rd edition (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1983) for the Yanomamo Indians of Venezuela and Brazil. A clear history of the exploration of New Guinea is by Gavin Souter, New Guinea: The Last Unknown (Angus and Robertson, London, 1963). The leaders of the Third Archbold Expedition describe their entrance into the Grand Valley of the Balim River in the report by Richard Archbold et al, 'Results of the Archbold Expeditions. No. 41. Summary of the 1938–1939 New Guinea expedition', Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 79, pp. 197–288 (1942). Two accounts by earlier explorers who attempted to penetrate the mountains of New Guinea are by A.F.R. Wollaston, Pygmies and Papuans (Smith Elder, London, 1912), and A.S, Meek, A Naturalist in Cannibal Land (Fisher Unwin, London, 1913). Chapter 14: Accidental Conquerors
Books that discuss plant as well as animal domestication in relation to the development of civilization include C.D. Darlington, The Evolution of Man and Society (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1969); Peter J. Ucko and G.W. Dimbleby, The Domestication and Exploitation of Plants and Animals (Aldine, Chicago, 1969); Erich Isaac, Geography of Domestication (Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1970); and David R. Harris and Gordon C. Hillman, Foraging and Farming (Unwin Hyman, London, 1989).
References on animal domestication include S. Bokonyi, History of Domestic Mammals in Central and Eastern Europe (Akademiai Kiado, Budapest, 1974); S.J.M. Davis and F.R. Valla, 'Evidence for domestication of the dog 12,000 years ago in the Natufian of Israel', Nature 276, pp. 608-10 (1978); Juliet Glutton-Brock, 'Man-made dogs', Science 197, pp. 1340-42 (1977), and Domesticated Animals from Early Times (British Museum of Natural History, London, 1981); Andrew Sherratt, 'Plough and pastoralism: aspects of the secondary products revolution', pp. 261–305 in a book edited by lan Hodder et al, Pattern of the Past (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1981); Stanley J. Olsen, Origins of the Domestic Dog (University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1985); E.S. Wing, 'Domestication of Andean mammals', pp. 246-64 in High Altitude Tropical Biogeography, edited by F. Vuilleumier and M. Monasterio (Oxford University Press, New York, 1986); Simon J.M. Davis, The Archaeology of Animals (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1987); Dennis C. Turner and Patrick Bateson, The Domestic Cat: The Biology of its Behaviour (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988); and Wolf Herre and Manfred Rohrs, Haustiere - zoologisch gesehen, 2nd edition (Fischer, Stuttgart, 1990).
Domestication specifically of the horse, and its importance, are the subjects of books by Frank G. Row, The Indian and the Horse (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1955); Robin Law, The Horse in West African History (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1980); and Matthew J. Kust, Man and Horse in History (Plutarch Press, Alexandria, Virginia, 1983). The development of wheeled vehicles, including war chariots, is treated in books by M. A. LittauerandJ.H. Crouwel, Wheeled Vehicles and Ridden Animals in the Ancient Near East (Brill, Leiden, 1979) and by Stuart Piggott, The Earliest Wheeled Transport (Thames and Hudson, London, 1983). Edward Shaughnessy describes the arrival of the horse and chariot in
China in 'Historical perspectives on the introduction of the chariot into China', Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 48, pp. 189–237 (1988).
For general accounts of plant domestication, see Kent V. Flannery, 'The origins of agriculture', Annual Review of Anthropology 2, pp. 271–310 (1973); Charles B. Heiser, Jnr, Seed to Civilization, 2nd edition (Freeman, San Francisco, 1981), and Of Plants and Peoples (University of Oklahoma Press, Norton, 1985); David Rindos, The Origins of Agriculture: an Evolutionary Perspective (Academic Press, New York, 1984); and Hugh H. Utis, 'Maize evolution and agricultural origins', pp. 195–213 in Grass Systematics and Evolution, edited by T.R. Soderstrom et al (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC, 1987). This and other papers by Iltis are a stimulating source of ideas about the differing ease of cereal domestication in the Old and New World. Plant domestication specifically in the Old World is treated by Jane Renfrew, Palaeoethnobotany (Columbia University Press, New York, 1973), and by Daniel Zohary and Maria Hopf, Domestication of Plants in the Old World (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988). Corresponding accounts for the New World include Richard S. MacNeish, 'The food-gathering and incipient agricultural stage of prehistoric Middle America', pp. 413-26 in the Handbook of Middle American Indians, edited by Robert Wauchope and Robert C. West, Vol. I: Natural Environment and Early Cultures (University of Texas Press, Austin, 1964); P.C. Mangelsdorf et al, 'Origins of agriculture in Middle America', pp. 427—45 in the book by Wauchope and West; D. Ugent, The potato', Science 170, pp. 1161-66 (1970); C.B. Heiser, Jnr, 'Origins of some cultivated New World plants', Annual Reviews of Ecology and Systematics 10, pp. 309-26 (1979); H.H. Iltis, 'From teosinte to maize: the catastrophic sexual dismutation', Science 222, pp. 886-94 (1983); William F. Keegan, Emergent Horticultural Economies of the Eastern Woodlands (Southern Illinois University, Carbon-dale, 1987); and B.D. Smith, 'Origins of agriculture in eastern North America', Science 246, pp. 1566-71 (1989). Three pioneering books point out the asymmetrical intercontinental spread of diseases, pests, and weeds: William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (Anchor Press, Garden City, New York, 1976); and Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Greenwood Press, Westport, 1972), and Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986).