A Short History of Progress edits 

Hi there Maclean, I will try to keep this short. I noticed your rewrite and you did some good work (and a lot it too) and thanks for that: plenty of review references also. 
Although I actually prefer the original but this is probably a matter of style and preference.
The good side is that now the original is defunct and no longer published at Wikipedia I can effectively take it back at least by fact although I know not really by law.  I am going to move on from Wikipedia into my own blog...
Things have a habit of getting dumbed down here particularly into mediocre and ineloquent English.
It is a bit cookbookish now: section by section of the Author's book...
Also I don't actually like the Background paragraph style as this should go into the Author Bio page otherwise you would have repeat it for ever Article for every book by that Author!?
Hence the downside of a cookbook or templated approach. 
Question: are foootnoted references to say comparison with other Authors considered original Research?
Also I couldnt find your original ref online but Martin Scoresse does not appear on Cinemaginaire's page for the film as an executive producer - given his preemminence I would pretty much take this as indicating that he is no longer associated with the project?
Also although you keenly summarized/precis some of the quotes (particular the first intro one) there were a few bits (perhaps cut down) I would still like to see in the article particularly from his concluding remarks "an ice age hunter gather, clever but seldom wise" etc and the last Easter islander bit as they are muost poignant and expressive rendered thus in the authors own words than in a cookbook summary of the book.  (I had this same difficulty once summarizing Nietzsche for an essay and in the end largely used the authors own words: how can one after all precis Nietzsche!)
Please don't be offended.  Maybe we should collaborate a little as I have no doubt that we will get a better result than either of us would otherwise on our own. 
Respond here or at my User Mattjs discussion page. (I rarely log in any more but will do so to check.) I will check back here in a few weeks or so (maybe longer) and make a few changes above after your feedback.
Regards 122.148.41.172   (Now i'm off to print and save an older copy for the Article for myself ;-))