Prehistoric Philosophy

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.