About this item

"In this remarkable and enlivening study, Stefanos Geroulanos traces the development of our modern fascination with humanity's deep past, and lays out that fascination's deadly costs." -- Amia Srinivasan, author of The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century An eminent historian tells the story of how we came to obsess over the origins of humanity -- and how, for three centuries, ideas of prehistory have been used to justify devastating violence against others. 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.