Marcus Tanner ponders the coexistence of man and animals

If you imagine that our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived “in harmony” with Mother Nature, Ross Barnett has news for you: they killed everything they could get their spears into. So if you go down to the woods today, you won’t see any bears, cave lions, elks or sabre-toothed cats. As our planet heads into another man-made mass extinction of species, The Missing Lynx: The Past and Future of Britain’s Lost Mammals (Bloomsbury Wildlife, £16.99; Tablet price £15.29) tells the fascinating story of a host of animals that coexisted, briefly, with the first humans in this country.