Just Finished Reading: Footmarks – A Journey into Our Restless Past by Jim Leary (FP: 2024) [238pp] 

The problem with digging up the deep past is that everything is static, dead, unmoving. Even Roman roads, ancient pathways, and drover's lanes are empty. Of course, when they were in daily use, they were anything but – that's the rub. How do you excavate a world on the move?  

That is the interesting question at the heart of this often-fascinating book. Humans move around a LOT and this was true thousands, indeed tens of thousands of years ago as it is today – except without continent spanning aircraft or ocean spanning liners. For much of our history if you wanted to go any great distance you walked there or, if you were lucky or rich, rode there on horseback. This is what we, and humanities predecessors, did. We got up and we walked out of Africa and across Eurasia and into both the America’s and Australia (although the last bit of that particular journey was by boat). 

There is a great deal of (growing) evidence for our mobile past from fossilised footprints (fascinating in and of themselves), to the very earliest bridges, river fords and more permanent constructions. To our very earliest boats of wood and leather to ocean going Viking craft. We have genetic evidence of grand movements of people, evidence of the spread of ideas, technology and burial beliefs over thousands of years and thousands of miles. All of this brings the dead, static, unmoving past to a more mobile, more visible, more human clarity. 

This is definitely a very different way of looking at the deep past. Despite some very good writing it did take me a little while to ‘reorientate’ myself (pun obviously intended!) to the author's vision but once I did a great deal of his arguments made perfect sense. Humans move – a LOT. So, viewing artifacts and structures with that in mind help us to understand why roads are where they are and go where they go. It helps to explain pilgrimages and religious sites, it helps to explain why coins and other artifacts are located in rivers, wells and other locations. It even explains the location of gates, doorways and walls. Seeing places without an occupying human community is only half the picture. This book helps being able to at least imagine, if not actually ‘see’ the other half. Full of interesting ideas, observations and discoveries. Definitely recommended for anyone interested in our very human mobile past.