On the Penguin History of the World

We begin with a steady diet of speculation about pre-history in a book purportedly about history.

“All animals have ways of living, some complex enough to be called cultures. Human culture alone is progressive; it has been increasingly built by conscious choice and selection within it as well as by accident and natural pressure, by the accumulation of a capital of experience and knowledge which man has exploited. Human history began when the inheritance of genetics and behavior which had until then provided the only way of dominating the environment was first broken through by conscious choice. Of course, human beings have never been able to make their history except within limits. Those limits are now very wide indeed, but they were once so narrow that it is impossible to identify the first step which took human evolution away from the determination of nature. We have for a long time only a blurred story, obscure both because the evidence is fragmentary and because we cannot be sure exactly what we are looking for.”

To be continued…