The Invention of Prehistory by Stefanos Geroulanos
History is often more interpretative than factual. Facts don’t always speak for themselves, and the facts are sometimes incomprehensible or missing altogether. The problem multiplies exponentially for prehistory, inhabited by hominids, including homo sapiens, who left neither written records nor enduring ruins, just bones. Facts about human prehistory are scarce, but their absence hasn’t prevented a swarm of interpreters eager to present baseless theories as factual.
The Invention of Prehistory interrogates a host of theories on the origins and evolution of humanity, illlustrating their use as props to support various untrue ideas about truth and the “natural order,” racism and sexism included. However, it’s tricky. As author Stefanos Geroulanos reports, the same “evidence” has often been interpreted in opposite ways. Unproveable ideas about prehistoric Africa have been deployed in support of Apartheid and Afrocentrism. But often enough, suppositions about our hairy ancestors, including alleged missing links between ape and homo sapien, were transposed onto “primitive” peoples as justification for slavery and imperialism.
Geroulanos, a historian at New York University, takes readers on a merry-go-round, roller-coaster ride through three centuries of Euro-American intellectual and cultural history. Darwin and Freud are regulars in his narrative, but they share passage with scores of less remembered paleontologists, geologists, anthropologists and psychologists. They keep company with novelists from H. Rider Haggard to Jack London as well as visual artists who depicted prehistory. Surprisingly, Geroulanos omitted King Kong from his account.
“I do not care if particular theories are true,” Geroulanos confesses, despite debunking or condemning most of them. “I ask what work they do and at whose expense.” He succeeds at showing how unproveable ideas on prehistory continue to shape our perceptions, citing the “Dawn of Man” sequence from 2001: A Space Odyssey, along with less salutary examples based on the false premises of paleo-historians.
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Geroulanos seems puzzled by human interest in human origins, as if the entire subject is an unwelcome distraction from the problems of here and now. His skepticism sometimes leaves a sour impression, given that he’s often unable to actually disprove ideas of which he disapproves. However, his driving point about prehistoric humans rings true: “They had ecstasies and feelings and terrors we will never comprehend.” We can never actually know them, but should that stop us from trying?
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