The ancient ghosts under our feet

Grounded: A Journey Into The Landscapes Of Our Ancestors

James Canton Canongate £18.99 ★★★★★

This is a book of ghost trails, burial mounds and crop marks, of stone circles and ancient treasures rising from the soil, and sacred places – not only religious buildings but other sites in the natural world that have inspired a sense of awe and wonder for generations.

James Canton searches for these parts of our landscape and explores their origins so that he can better understand the relationship between our ancestors and the natural world.

Through his eyes we see the magic of the discovery of the 4,000 year-old figure of the Dagenham Idol, dragged from the Essex marshes in 1922. He shows us evidence of a prehistoric picnic held by our farmer and huntergatherer ancestors near Stonehenge, and Bronze Age people who returned to burial places to collect the bones of the deceased as heirlooms, as you might a photograph or a piece of jewellery today.

From these anecdotes Canton extrapolates ‘time-thin truths’: chief among them, that we have always found ways to express our experience of being human.

We have much in common with our ancestors, Canton writes. Yet today we have lost our connection to the natural world, which has never before been under more threat. This book isn’t a polemic, attempting to galvanise readers to eco-action, nor does it scientifically deconstruct the demise of our landscape. Instead it offers something far more liminal and lyrical, as Canton tries to inspire our sense of wonder at the natural world by offering us these glimpses into the lives of our ancestors.

At times Grounded feels rather rambling, jumping as it does from anecdote to anecdote, via literary references, archaeological sources, podcasts and conversations with friends. But if charming, rambling men, and indeed men rambling, is your thing, this may be for you.