Humanity’s search for a prehistoric origin poses perhaps the most fundamental questions to the humanities - what is the human, and where does it come from?
The search for these answers however, as Stefan Geroulanos argues in The Invention of Prehistory, has always been about those who do the searching. The Neanderthals remain silent, as humans project answers onto their shattered bones. As Geralanous details, pop-intellectuals like Steven Pinker, Jared Diamond, and Yuval Noah Harari have spun best-selling liberal triumphalist narratives about how humanity came to be out of whole cloth. Other popular, contemporary narratives have also widely circulated, such as the speculation that humanity arose because a group of apes began to use hallucinogens and became enlightened, termed the “Stoned Ape Hypothesis”. The commonality between such interpretations is that the shadowy figures of prehistory change shape to reflect what the authors and their readers think about humanity. The Invention of Prehistory argues this was the case since prehistory’s origin, dated by Geroulanos to 1750, when Rosseau and other enlightenment thinkers imagined a humanity which had always been developing. The book’s genealogical sequencing of the notion of prehistory extends through four parts, consisting of 20 chapters, in roughly chronological order. In these chapters, Geroulanos applies a sharp critical eye towards prehistory’s role in the ideas, among others, of Darwin, Marx, Freud, the Nazis, decolonial advocates, and proponents of women’s liberation. In doing so, the book ambitiously aims to uncover how beliefs in the origins of man have always concealed violence.
One way that Geroulanos impactfully argues this is through an analysis of the creation of ethnocentric prehistoric myths. One example of this in the text is the history of the concept of Indo-Europeanism, or as German writers termed it, Indo-Germanism. Geroulanos shows in the second chapter how myths grew from the study of linguistics, through which a language family, consisting of a majority of Asian speakers and a European minority, was outlined in the 1850’s. The idea that this language-culture had at one point “conquered” Europe, after being pushed out of India due to overpopulation, quickly emerged. This conception lent itself to ethno-nationalist imaginations; it both painted Europeans as conquerors and pushed India into Europe’s past. This was particularly true in Germany, where previously existing fantasies of barbarians overrunning Rome were drawn on. German linguists transmuted the notion of the Indo-European conquest to one where Teutonic tribes were the original Indo-European arrivals in Europe, from whom the language group’s European presence originated. These accounts offered by the text are particularly striking, as the concept of Indo-Europeans who are “forced” to leave Asia in a wave which comes to swamp the pre-existing population remains a familiar conception today. As the book points out, this conception assumes without evidence that migrants acted, unilaterally, as foreign invaders compelled by nature.
Another critical development in the creation of these myths was the introduction of evolution into the public consciousness, likely the most important point Geroulanous identifies in the genealogy of prehistory. This understanding was connected with the discovery of dinosaur fossils, as well as fossils that would later come to be identified as extinct species of the homo genus. In the European imagination, the prehistoric world these fossils implied was frequently understood and portrayed as a Hobbesian war of all against all.
Geroulanos insightfully argues, citing the journal entries of a British colonialist who had settled in Jamaica who described the world around him, that this reflected a fundamentally colonial view of the state of nature before the colonist intervened – and which was returned to during events like a slave rebellion (Ch. 3). When in 1859 Darwin published the Origin of Species, this only further contributed to visions of man’s inherently chaotic pre-civilized state (Ch. 5). At the same time as the colonialist decried nature’s violence however, Darwin’s notion of survival of the fittest could simultaneously be used to excuse colonial genocide as something predetermined. Despite this, the text treats Darwin himself with a degree of nuance. While Darwin’s racism was extreme, he believed scientifically in the notion of a universal origin of man, which was an insight of historical significance. As Geroulanos describes, writing from Darwin shows that the scientist found the thought that he may share an origin with the indigenous people of America hard to grapple with, but inescapable. To settle his unease, Darwin ultimately settled on a notion of “domestication” as responsible for producing what he saw as the more advanced European qualities in himself (Ch. 5). In his analysis, Geroulanos shows how even the most advanced scientists of their day, still upheld as heroes in biology classrooms today for their scientific contributions, projected their own view of man onto theories of his origin.
Geroulanos shows how even the most advanced scientists of their day, still upheld as heroes in biology classrooms today for their scientific contributions, projected their own view of man onto theories of his origin.
As Geroulanos progresses into the 19th century, he brings in the concept of the “thin veneer”, another insightful formulation which threads his argument across centuries. Geroulanos uses this concept to describe how many came to think that underneath civilization’s mask is a savage who is barely restrained. As the author goes on, the origins for this could possibly be dated to the late 19th century. From this time, it became an intractable part of humanity’s relation to prehistory. The concept lives on in many ways today – transfigured through new neurological science, like in the “killer ape” theory in which a baser “lizard brain” exists that will take control in certain situations (Ch. 17) - but also in society’s broader understanding of the subconscious. The concept’s origin is not identified with a single author, as Geroulanos extrapolates it from a variety of sources. One particularly influential contributor however is Freud, who first brought the subconscious to public discourse at the beginning of the 20th century. Freud thought that neuroses in the civilized world were borne of the constant need to repress one’s primal instincts; as he formulates it in The Totem, the guilt from the murder of the primal father. Geroulanos’ nuanced treatment of Freud is a highlight of The Invention of Prehistory, as the book’s connection of Freud’s often discarded ideas with the larger genealogical story puts their significance, and that of prehistory, in clear light. As the book leads the reader to see, Freud’s invention of the subconscious – or that which lays behind the “thin veneer” of civilized, history-producing society – is very much ingrained in our beliefs today. Formulated in this way, the significance is undeniable. Who today denies the existence of the subconscious? As Geroulanos writes with characteristic flare, “The primal murder might seem easy to snicker at today after a whole century of chewing and ruminating on every aspect of Freud’s thought…But our mouths are full of the same cud, and the laughter turns grotesque.” (Ch. 10).
Geroulanos also details how Freud’s defiant student, Jung, employed his concept of the ancient subconscious, though in a different way. Jung’s conception is one which also carries much currency today, and has had a great deal of historical impact. Rather than locating the subconscious in a universal Darwinian point of origin, Jung’s subconscious is found in the “world behind the world” of shared, ethnically exclusive cultural myths that descend from prehistory. In this way, Jung’s subconscious was “all but racial” (Ch. 10). Though not stated in the text directly, one way Jung’s legacy continues is through the employment of his ideas in contemporary psychology, where among other uses, his work provides the basis for the well known Meyers-Briggs personality types. Another way is through the employment of his ideas in Nazi thought, which shared Jung’s conviction that Jews, among others, lacked access to the same noble, Indo-European world behind the world. Today, the text mentions, one other way Jung’s works’ legacy continues is through its regurgitation by pop-intellectuals like Jordan Peterson, who Geroulanos bitingly terms “Jung’s silliest disciple” (Ch. 10).
As Geroulanos writes with characteristic flare, “[Freud’s] primal murder might seem easy to snicker at today after a whole century of chewing and ruminating on every aspect of Freud’s thought…But our mouths are full of the same cud, and the laughter turns grotesque.
The use of prehistoric conceptions to dehumanize the other and legitimize violence is another central point made by this book. One place he makes this argument is in Chapter 11, “The Hordes and the Flood”, where special attention is drawn to the use of the dehumanizing language of natural disaster with respect to movements of people. As an example the text cites Victor Orbán, minister of Hungary, who says that “mass migration is a slow stream of water persistently eroding the shores of Europe”. In the chapter, Geroulanos shows how such language has roots in longstanding cultural myths that relate to theorized or invented events that happened in prehistory. Europeans, the text points out, can reach far back to create a self-image of being assaulted by waves of the nomadic: the Ottomans, the Mongols, the Huns, and even the Indo-Europeans, who are held by much historiography to have “swamped” the Celtic culture. Geroulanos shows through these examples how power has “presented the deep past as a living enemy”, as leaders obliquely reference unquestioned cultural mythology about how Europe came to be.
Following this chapter, in Chapter 12, Geroulanos shows systematically, with bullet pointed explanations, how nearly all of the myths which he identifies as resulting from self-centered prehistorical analysis were employed by the Nazis. As the Reich aimed to exert maximum control, the Nazis claimed all the prehistoric legitimacy they could. For example, the racial pre-history of the Indo-Germanic conqueror, and his hostile relation to the nomad, is argued in this chapter to have not only provided a vague impetus for, but to have shaped the specific details of the Nazi agenda. Other arguments employed by the Nazis included the invocation of a wave of Judeo-Bolshevism which was crashing at the gates, in which comparison is implicitly made with Europe’s imagined prehistoric invaders. In another example, a selectively applied form of the survival of the fittest suggested a moral need to ethnically cleanse, to prevent a decay resulting from civilization’s lack of natural selection. Similarly, the chapter shows how analogy was drawn by the Reich’s leaders to the Germanic tribe’s sack of the opulent Rome, to be repeated, but with international Jewry taking Rome’s place. Here, Geroulanos renders the destructive potential of humanist theories in clear detail.
The book does also include an account of those who have used analogy to prehistory for less malicious reasons. Though largely in line with the book’s overarching arguments, Geroulanos does away with these analogies as incorrect, and as being harmful in unintended ways. One example of this is the text’s arguments relating to the use of prehistory in feminist advocacy. In chapter 6, later to appear in chapter 19, Geroulanos analyzes the conception of primitive communism advanced by Engels. In Engels’ conception, at some point in prehistory – an original point – society was matriarchal and communist. Later, as agriculture rendered men the ability to obtain increasing amounts of property due to physical strength, the men overthrew female domination, and began on the path to feudalism (Ch. 6). For some feminists and communists, this idea had a practical appeal. Critics however, including on the feminist left, found it self-serving and ridiculous. In this account, Geroulanos shows an extent of political even handedness in his approach to dispelling prehistorical notions, which he argues are universally about those who create them, to which primitive communism provides another example. A similar example would be the fantasy of the mitochondrial eve, which has received a tremendous amount of press attention. The concept posits that humanity can all be traced back to a single, female ancestor. On a superficial level the idea might seem to give agency to women as the carriers of humanity, and has been employed that way by some. But, as Geroulanos mercilessly shows, firstly, the notion is scientifically absurd; secondly, the notion is very often used to tell the story of the moment that Eve “escapes” Africa carrying humanity in her womb, carrying implicitly racist undertones. Once again, with a keen eye, Geroulanos dispels any realist notions of prehistory, even those that seem superficially benign (Ch. 19).
Despite the strength of these arguments, there are some choices the book makes that give it certain weaknesses that can be acknowledged. Simultaneously however, these choices also afford the text unique qualities. The most important of these is within the text’s premise, which relies on drawing lines from one thinker to the next over 250 years. While presented quite convincingly, these connections are not always iron-clad. The resemblance of various theories of development throughout time is undeniable, but this alone does not prove that such theories have a genealogical relation. For example, one connection Geroulanos makes is between the divisions of a 1st/2nd/3rd world and the savage/barbarous/civilized. While convincing, this connection is not concretely substantiated by the book. Such problems may be inevitable given the self-admitted presentist gaze Geroulanos examines this 250-year period with (Intro.). He commits himself at the outset to connecting 1750 to 2024 and everything in between, and in this sense the issue of teleological historiography is essentially unavoidable from the premise. Nevertheless, this lofty ambition is what allowed the story to be told in the first place, which clearly has great merit. As the book argues, in his pursuit, presentism is unavoidable. Even so, this perspective does offer one point the case can be attacked from. Another related potential weakness, also stemming from this approach, is the book’s reliance on pop-cultural figures. Is it valuable to take down Jordan Peterson, a man who is not taken seriously by any academic? Will The Invention of Prehistory retain its same punch in decades, when such figures have faded away? These jabs may add a shelf life to what could otherwise be a timeless work. On the other hand, an engagement with popular culture added an interesting element for the contemporary audience. While someone like Peterson may not be taken seriously in academia, in broader society, he is. An understanding of how that came to be, at least in 2025, is a fun and topical reward for Geroulanos’ readers.
With these issues aside however, Geroulanos makes a quite strong case for his important arguments: that the writers of prehistory fundamentally write about themselves, and that appeals to the origin of man hide an element of violence in that they create social hierarchies. Since the first notions of a prehistory, the hope of uncovering a pure ancestor that can tell us who man is has been extremely compelling. But this ancestor is always a construction, consisting of more belief than science. If he ever existed, he is lost to us now.
This book is recommended to readers who find these arguments interesting, and who would like to understand more of Geroulanos’ detailed and multidimensional supporting points. The book is also recommended to those who hope to gain insight into the prehistoric elements present, and nearly always taken for granted, in a vast array of intellectual fields, like psychology, language, and biology. The Invention of Prehistory promises the reader, with dizzying ambition, to build a history of prehistory from 1750 to 2024; and in many ways, it delivers. For this reason, the book is remarkable.
