Coming home to the Pleistocene

Paul Shepard was one of the most profound and original thinkers of our time. Seminal works like The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game, Thinking Animals, and Nature and Madness introduced readers to new and provocative ideas about humanity and its relationship to the natural world. Throughout his long and distinguished career, Shepard returned repeatedly to his guiding theme, the central tenet of his thought: that our essential human nature is a product of our genetic heritage, formed through thousands of years of evolution during the Pleistocene epoch, and that the current subversion of that Pleistocene heritage lies at the heart of today's ecological and social ills. Coming Home to the Pleistocene provides the fullest explanation of that theme. The book explicitly addresses the fundamental question raised by Shepard's work: What can we do to re-create a life more in tune with our genetic roots? In this book, Shepard presents concrete suggestions for fostering the kinds of ecological settings and cultural practices that are optimal for human health and well-being.… (more)

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LibraryThing member pansociety

Many consider the author among the great ecological thinkers of our century. This book, written shortly before his death, amplifies Shepard's original idea, that we suffer spiritual and physical debilitation because "we have, in the course of a few thousand years, alienated ourselves from our only

home, planet Earth, our only time, the Pleistocene, and our only companions, our fellow creatures." Other highly recommended titles by Shepard, recently reprinted by the University of Georgia Press, include The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game (1973), Thinking Animals (1978), and Nature and Madness (1982).

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LibraryThing member owen1218

This book has had a clear influence on two growing and related movements: rewilding, and the paleolithic diet. Its main idea is that humans remain wild on a genetic level, and can only remain tame to the detriment of our health: physical, mental, social, and otherwise.

Maybe because it has been

influential, it's already seeming a bit dated. Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth provides a detailed critique of the agricultural diet, and so-called primitive skills groups are now taking some of his suggestions into practice. The political implications of his book, with those of Daniel Quinn's works, have been largely superseded by Derrick Jensen, Ward Churchill, and others, who have been more concerned with strategy than can be said for most authors. Nevertheless it's a useful if cursory look at human nature.

Although I suppose I should add some more critical remarks. The author spends a lot of time looking backwards at human foraging, as something that no longer exists. However, hunters and gatherers remain, and although most use guns now, their traditional cultures remain. More specifically the author seems mostly interested in a particular sort of foraging people, the sort called "bands" by cultural anthropologists. He lumps these all together and treats them as if they are all more or less the same, ignoring the differences between them and stating simple facts that might apply to five hundred groups and not apply to five hundred others. In general, the author grossly neglects cultural differences, preferring instead to examine human behavior in terms of genetics.

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