The Invention of Prehistory

Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins

By: Stefanos Geroulanos

Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley

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. We are obsessed with prehistory—and, in this respect, our current era is no different from any other in the last three hundred years. 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. From the "state of nature" and Romantic notions of virtuous German barbarians to theories about Neanderthals, killer apes, and a matriarchal paradise where women ruled, Geroulanos captures the sheer variety and strangeness of the ideas that animated many of the major thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles Darwin, and Karl Marx. Yet as Geroulanos shows, such ideas became, for the most part, the ideological foundations of repressive regimes and globe-spanning empires.

©2024 Stefanos Geroulanos (P)2024 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

A brave, insightful work

This is a monumental piece that explores and critiques the history of people, almost entirely from the dominant group, inventing some narrative regarding the prehistory of humans. This narrative inevitably supports the cohort that wants to stay in power. Geroulanos is fascinated with the seemingly extreme and curious need that people have to invent these stories and then hold them close as essential to their identity. I have wondered about this too but knew of no one exploring the phenomenon.

Since the scholars and advocates of these theories hold them dear, I see Geroulanos’s work as an act of courage. He must have experienced significant push back and perhaps ostracism for delving into this unquestioned quagmire. But I say bravo - I thoroughly enjoyed and grew from reading this great work of scholarship.

An important critique

The author critiques the history of human origins research, not from the point of view of the accuracy of the research but rather focusing on how that research is "used" to legitimize power relationships in the modern world.
The book makes many excellent points, and should be ready by paleoanthropologists and archaeologists alike. At times the critique becomes facile and/or tenuous. And at times the author surely overstates the influence of human origins stories. But these shortcomings don't overshadow the importance of the overall critique.
The author's writing has what feels like a very sanctimonious tone to it, which is unfortunately made much worse by the audio narration.

Too much judgement

the author reflects so much attitude in his opinions that it takes away from the scholarship.