The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins

“Geroulanos examines how the most distant human past has been subjectively interpreted. ‘No epic is more stirring, none more seductive,’ the author argues, or dangerously misguided and mistaken.”

Historians, politicians, scientists, theologians, etc., interpret ancient history based on reflections on their times. This work further examines how history is prejudiced by those who study it and why. Even the same evidence can be used to support very different agendas and theories.

In The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins, Stefanos Geroulanos examines how the most distant human past has been subjectively interpreted. “No epic is more stirring, none more seductive,” the author argues, or dangerously misguided and mistaken.

Many of his questions remind us of how far society still must go. Neanderthals were once thought brutish and stupid. Now that they are seen as intelligent, do we assume they were white? The author points out that we have only accepted Africa as the place of human beginning in the last 60 years.

Geroulanos argues that speculation and studies of how humanity came to be have a dark history, especially as regards racism and violence. Arguably, it is “rooted in illusions, often murderous ones” “celebrating those who practice a particular idea of humanity and for demonizing those who do not.”

The author tells this story through “concepts rather than individual scientists or treatises or books,” beginning with the 18th century when Europeans had to account for humanity in the Americas, outside the Biblical stories, grounded in finding excuses for the “savage” treatment of Indigenous native peoples. Many themes, such as the human brain and sexism, come back in The Invention of Prehistory in different contexts.

From that thinking came the concept of the “state of nature” instead of civilization. Societies parallel children's development, from innocence and crudeness to maturity and civilization. The native peoples were not viewed as only technologically backward but socially undeveloped.

Dividing people by material culture did not lessen dehumanization. The European intellectual and moral “superiority” was not questioned, with less technologically advanced people used as the standard for whether a particular civilization was rising or falling.

The Age of Enlightenment, as the self-proclaimed enlightened styled their era, imagined their republics in France, the United States, etc., modeled after the ancient Romans. At the same time, the Germans could fantasize as genetic inheritors of the victorious enemies of the Caesars.

These nationalistic lines of thought were abundantly problematic, such as explaining Sanskrit, China, Egypt, Greece, India, Mesopotamia, and more. Ghandi’s famous questioning of Western civilization's being civilized remains unanswered. The ideas of the savage hordes, Nazism, and the Cold War continued this tradition. The author covers much unfamiliar ground, such as bombing Indigenous people and caves.

Geroulanos argues that these ideas pointed to broader thinking in Great Britain that placed human development as part of an infinitely more extensive natural history. Dinosaurs would especially represent that unimaginably far greater ancient past to the public.

Henry de la Beche and others could argue issues like brutality, evil, revolution, and slavery in natural forces before people existed. Geology represented the same forces of destruction as ruins did the fall and loss of ancient civilizations. Ernest Haeckel even “argued that humans carried ruins within.” Remnants of past people, living but also dead, especially as with the Neanderthal, also remained.

Geroulanos asks what that says to the Bible and race. Answers were hindered by prejudices and a lack of scientific knowledge, which resulted in misunderstanding chronology and context. Rousseau, Darwin, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and many others have their places in the story, as do Africanism, diffusionism, genocide, imperialism, racism, and sexism.

The Invention of Prehistory, however, sets a positive tone. Recognizing that humanity sees even itself with blinders provides the means of introspection that leads to new ways of thinking, such as antiracism, even if a realistic understanding of early humans and civilization is sometimes not improved.

The larger-than-usual print and well-placed illustrations add to the pleasure of reading the easy text of this thought-provoking 400-page book. The Invention of Prehistory is annotated.