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Article: A short, sharp flip through our complex history.(Life)
- Article from:
- Cape Argus (South Africa)
- Article date:
- November 2, 2009
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 Independent News & Media PLC. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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This brief history of South Africa is a miracle of compression, an accessible and compulsively readable account which spans billions of years of pre-history before taking the story up to the present day.
To accomplish this feat, Dr Francis Wilson, an economist, has had to acquire a more than superficial grasp of various other disciplines, including anthropology, geology, paleontology, archaeology and South African history, absorbing the exciting advances in scholarship made in recent decades. And he passes on what he has learnt in a 120-page narrative which whips along at a cracking pace.
Wilson kicks off with a big bang about 2.02 billion years ago when ...