The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins
The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless…
Specifikacia The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins
The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins
Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless accounts of new archaeological findings and speculate about what those findings tell us about our earliest ancestors. In this coruscating work, acclaimed historian Stefanos Geroulanos demonstrates how claims about the earliest humans not only shaped Western intellectual culture, but gave rise to our modern world.The very idea that there was a human past before recorded history only emerged with the Enlightenment, when European thinkers began to reject faith-based notions of humanity and history in favor of supposedly more empirical ideas about the world. We are obsessed with prehistory--and, in this respect, our current era is no different from any other in the last three hundred years.
From the "state of nature" and Romantic notions of virtuous German barbarians to
Human Origins and Evolution