ELEPHANTS IN EDEN

This is a fresh and lively adventure into the world of those who came before us, which belongs on the shelf next to Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harrari and Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.

When our prehistoric ancestors left Africa, they passed through the forests, deserts, and mountains of what is known today as the Holy Land. But the people of Halfon and Barkai's book were here long before the Hebrews, the Palestinians and the Canaanites. The book does not concern itself with the biblical period. This is perhaps the magic of prehistory: it transcends the shackles of national and religious history and looks back to a time when witches were buried next to a cave of turtle shells, and even further back, to about 700,000 years ago, when Homo erectus cracked elephant skulls near the Jordan Valley. These predecessors hunted elephants and developed tools near the Sea of Galilee. They buried their dead on the slopes of the Carmel mountains, carved drawings in the caves of the Upper Galilee, mined copper in the Arava desert and erected remarkable structures in the Judean Desert and the Golan Heights. What we learn about their lives informs much of what we know about who we have become.

In this accessible, informative, and splendidly entertaining book, we follow two intrepid explorers into the history of those who came before us. Armed with extensive research, a healthy dose of curiosity and no small amount of wit, Eyal Halfon and Ran Barkai travel from site to site and reveal the vibrant and sometimes brutal world of our ancestors in this narrow strip of the Fertile Crescent. We get to meet Homo habilis and Homo erectus, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, as well as the scientists, farmers, generals, archeologists and adventurers who dig up their prehistory in this small but crucial piece of earth.

This is a book about an ancient world, a world that can teach us about nature, and about human nature, and about the ever-evolving connection between the two.

RAN BARKAI is a professor of prehistoric archaeology and former chair of the Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Cultures at Tel Aviv University. His recent findings have garnered international attention in The Science Times ("Hyper-Carnivores: Stone Age Humans Were Top Predators Who Ate Large Animals:), and CNN ("Ancient cave artists starved themselves of oxygen while painting among many others).
EYAL HALFON is a screenwriter and movie director. Two of his feature films, "What a Wonderful Place" and "Circus Palestina", won the Israeli Academy Awards for best film and best script.