In drawing together evidence from complex strands of archaeology, climatology, genetics and religious symbolism, Watson is compulsively speculative' IndependentAround 15,000 BC humans spread out from Africa, arriving in Siberia during the Ice Age. Locked up in ice sheets, the world's oceans were 400 feet lower than today, allowing humans to walk across the Bering Strait and enter America. When then Ice Age ended, the Strait refilled with water. This isolated the Americas and created a division - with two populations unaware of each other - until Columbus 'discovered' America in AD 1492.The Great Divide compares and contrasts the development of humans in the 'Old World' and the 'New', offering a revealing insight into what it means to be human. Watson identifies a three-stage process fundamental to shaping civilizations throughout the world, using an origional synthesis of archaeology, anthropology, meteorology, cosmology and mythology to give a new shape - and a new understanding - to human history.PhoenixHistory