Overview

Prehistoric Philosophy challenges the narrative of progress and other civilizational myths by looking at their origins in the neolithic revolution. Once we reject the simplistic and often racist stereotyping of hunter-gatherers, the agricultural revolution no longer appears as the first step of human progress, but rather as a messy, brutal shift that unleashed a host of evils into the world: inequality, hierarchy, disease, empire, warfare, patriarchy, slavery, and environmental destruction. Building on the success of Graeber and Wengrow’s ground-breaking The Dawn of Everything, Justin Pack reads the neolithic revolution together with indigenous critiques, using each to strengthen our understanding of the other. In doing so, he helps us to understand the concerns of many indigenous communities, and forces us to recognize our role in the death of the cosmos. Building on this, the book illuminates the rise of the world’s major religious and philosophical traditions in the axial age as different attempts to make sense of, justify, or escape the evils of inequality, disease, empire, and the loss of cosmic civility. By advancing the notion of a ‘prehistoric philosophy,’ this volume simultaneously interrogates the colonialism inherent in the Western philosophy canon.

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9781350531321

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Reviews

This book is a call to decolonize our minds and reimagine our relationship with the world. By centering the indigenous critique and drawing on the latest anthropological research, it dismantles long-held assumptions about progress, offering a powerful counter-narrative to traditional histories and demonstrates the importance of cross-disciplinary work in academia. * Angela Montague, Assistant Professor of Professional Practice, School of Social Sciences, Utah State University, USA *

Author Information

Justin Pack is a Lecturer at California State University, Stanislaus, USA. He studies the outstanding characteristic of our time: thoughtlessness and has written books on how it manifests in higher education, in world alienation, in the contemporary environmental crisis, in money, and in meritocratic ideals. He loves redwoods, giant sequoias, birds, enchiladas verdes, ancient fortresses, and ruins.

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