A monumental photographic journey through the cradle of humankind, says Peter Dench

An archæological mystery, first noticed accidentally due to aerial photography in 1933, is etched across the hillside of Monte Sierpe (Serpent Mountain) in the Pisco Valley in southern Peru. It takes

John Blair Killing the Dead Vampire epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World 536pp. Princeton University Press. £30 (US $35). A dead body, as anyone who has sat with one will know, is an unsettling

W e’re parked up in our Land Cruiser on the golden grasslands of Botswana’s Mababe Depression, surrounded by Cape buffaloes caked in mud. “There must be 3,000 of them here,” our guide Jonah Seboko say

In 1978, Soviet geologists stumbled upon a family living in a remote part of Siberia. Having moved there to escape religious persecution, they hadn’t interacted with the outside world for decades.

Philippe Ariès Pages RessuscitéesEdited by Guillaume Gros240pp. Cerf Éditions. €24. Given that Philippe Ariès wrote about man’s relation with his own mortality, it is piquant that the historian has be