Book Talk 62: Stefanos Geroulanos on "The Invention of Prehistory" | Think About It Podcast

Book Talk 62: Stefanos Geroulanos on "The Invention of Prehistory"
Originally published on April 26, 2024

What does it mean to be human? What do we know about the true history of humankind? In this episode, I spoke with historian and NYU professor Stefanos Geroulanos to discuss his new book, The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins (Liveright, 2024) to discover how claims about the earliest humans and humankind’s true beginnings inform political and social practices to this day.

How do the various stories we tell about human origins, including those about Neanderthals, homo sapiens, killer apes, noble savages, and missing links shape the modern world? Have you followed a keto diet, become aware of your reptile brain, idealized a pre-modern state of existence, or demonized others as behaving like Neanderthals? Geroulanos explains how accounts of prehistory arise in particular historical moments to solve contemporary problems, often linked to but as often quite apart from actual scientific knowledge. The Invention of Prehistory provides a crucial and timely examination of how the pursuit of understanding humanity's beginnings has been intertwined with agendas of war and domination.
Find the book here: https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324091455

Ulrich Baer is Professor of German and Comparative Literature in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. He received his BA from Harvard University and his PhD from Yale University before joining the faculty of NYU in 1995. He is a widely published author, editor, and translator, and an expert on modern poetry, contemporary photography, literary theory, and philosophy.

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. His new book is a history of the concepts, images, and sciences of human origins since 1770. He serves as a Co-Executive Editor of the Journal of the History of Ideas. In the past, he has also served as Director of the Center for International Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique/NYU) and, with Gisèle Sapiro, as the co-Principal Investigator of the FACE Foundation's PUF grant Crossroads in Intellectual History (2016-2021).

Further Listening on the Think About It podcast:

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's “The Social Contract” with Melissa Schwartzberg: https://newbooksnetwork.com/great-boo...
Michel Foucault on Truth and Knowledge with Ann Stoler: https://newbooksnetwork.com/great-boo...
Sigmund Freud’s “Civilization and its Discontents” with Peter Brooks: https://newbooksnetwork.com/great-boo...
The Alarmingly Relevant Hannah Arendt with Richard Bernstein: https://newbooksnetwork.com/richard-j...