Decoding Prehistory: Facts vs. Speculation

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Dr. Stefanos Geroulanos is the Director of the Remarque Institute and a Professor of European Intellectual History at New York University. He usually writes about concepts that weave together modern understandings of time, the human, and the body. He is the author or co-author of several books, with the latest one being The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins.

In this episode, we focus on The Invention of Prehistory. We start by talking about how people got interested in prehistory, what “invention” means in this case, what our understanding of the past is shaped by, and the example of the Neanderthals. We discuss European colonization, and concepts like “savage” and “civilization”; indigenous peoples and the first humans; “human nature” and political debates between socialists and capitalists; and eugenics and Nazism. We talk about the impact of popular books, like Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, and claims about how we should live our present lives. Finally, we discuss whether there is any problem with anthropologists studying our past.

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