Review by Booklist Review
When picturing the lives of prehistoric people, certain images cram our modern mind: cave dwellers toting simple tools formed from stone or animal bones, bands of raggedy men hunting mammoths, even cartoons. Sure enough, historian Geroulanos warns that our quest to understand human origins "is rooted in illusions." Accompanied by eye-catching illustrations, his study mulls over both "science and speculation." He discusses Neanderthals, Nazis, cave paintings, colonial violence, warfare, fossils, relics, ruination, race, patriarchy, and the eradication of Indigenous peoples. The works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, H. G. Wells, Jesuit priest and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Sigmund Freud, and Charles Darwin are highlighted throughout the discourse. The power (in this case, often ferocious and pejorative) of language and connotations is admirably addressed. Just consider the weight of these words: primitive, barbarian, savages, migration, hordes, natives, troglodytes. Essential questions are pondered, including whether aggression is embedded in human beings. Ultimately Geroulanos decides that "humans have almost nothing in common with our paleolithic forefathers." Rather, we have constructed a daunting new world, unnatural, technological, and exploitative.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
NYU historian Geroulanos (The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe) offers an incisive and captivating reassessment of prehistory. Tracing how modern notions of humanity's origins have often mixed scientific research with political mythmaking, Geroulanos characterizes prehistory as a "pretend foundation" that does little more than codify the current era's hierarchies of power. First galvanized by contact between Europeans and Indigenous Americans, Enlightenment-era speculation about deep-time history was influenced by existing social theories, according to Geroulanos. The most impactful of these was philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau's description of Indigenous Americans as more virtuous and "primitive" than Europeans, which drew on his already developed ideas about the naturally pure condition of children. Across the ensuing centuries, Geroulanos shows, this notion of Indigenous peoples as a version of humanity still in its childhood gave rise to phrenology and "race science," which further bolstered bunk prehistorical narratives. Examples include 19th-century research into humanity's origins via the study of contemporaneous Indigenous peoples' bones--as if they were living fossils--and the 20th-century idea of a pure "Aryan" race poorly extrapolated from the theoretical existence of an Indo-European proto-language. Indicting today's research into prehistory, Geroulanos charges that reconstructions of ancient DNA rely on inherently biased data sets. In lucid prose, Geroulanos unspools an enthralling and detailed history of the development of modern natural science. It's a must-read. (Apr.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A historian casts a wide net across the ages to look at how the concept of the "deep past" has been used to justify and project wrong-headed and arrogant theories about human behavior and motivation. In a stunningly comprehensive work of epistemological research, Geroulanos--a professor of history at NYU, where he is the director of the Remarque Institute, and the author of a number of academic books--looks at the ways man (and they have been mostly men) has organized prehistory to fit his uses, from Rousseau's writing on the "noble savage" to what may be revealed by the recent mapping of the Neanderthal genome. Scientists have long been fascinated by what the earliest humans can tell us, and the author gradually chronicles how the more we learned about our distant ancestors, the less we have actually "evolved." The author clearly shows how Eurocentric standards still prevail in how we organize history, and he concentrates much of his prodigious research on the power of language in determining our "epic myths"--e.g., the use of the term primitive in characterizing Indigenous peoples and thus justifying exploitation and extermination. Throughout his consistently illuminating narrative, Geroulanos explores the work of many influential writers, scientists, and theorists, including Darwin, who spurred new theories about "the ascent of man"; Thomas Henry Huxley, who "demonstrated structural homologies between human and ape skeletons"; and Freud, who "proposed that…there is no individual without the group first" and theorized that "guilt, murder, and the renunciation of sex had launched civilization." Given the catastrophic destruction of the world wars and other massive conflicts in the 20th century, the Holocaust, and other genocides that continue to occur around the world, Geroulanos effectively exposes how little separates modern humans from the idea of the "barbarian." An astute, powerfully rendered history of humanity. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
