Everything Is Material: An Archaeologist's History of Humankind

A groundbreaking archeologist offers a bottom-up perspective on humankind through the essential materials that have shaped our lives—from the wood and soil that built civilization to the plastic and concrete that threaten to destroy it. “What we think and say may turn out to be less telling than what we make and throw away. So argues Maikel Kuijpers in Everything Is Material, a work that is, at once, fascinating, eye-opening, and terrific fun.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Under a White Sky Entire prehistoric epochs are named after materials: Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age. But something changes when “history” begins. There is no Concrete Age that follows the Iron Age, even though the Roman Empire could not have been built without concrete. The Age of Enlightenment is really the Age of Glass—without microscopes and telescopes, there wouldn’t have been much enlightenment. Today, materials we have dug up, hauled, sawn, built, and manufactured—from screwdrivers to skyscrapers—now exceed the weight of all living biomass on earth, an unimaginable total of 1,154 gigatons. Nearly half of all that material mass is concrete.