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    Coming Home to the Pleistocene
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    Coming Home to the Pleistocene
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    Coming Home to the Pleistocene
    Ebook312 pages5 hours

    Coming Home to the Pleistocene

    By Paul Shepard

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Paul Shepard was one of the mprofound 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, Paul 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 currsubversion 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. Completed just before his death in the summer of 1996, it represents the culmination of Paul Shepard's life work and constitutes the clearest, maccessible expression of his ideas. Coming Home to the Pleistocene pulls together the threads of his vision, considers new research and thinking that expands his own ideas, and integrates material within a new matrix of scientific thought that both enriches his original insights and allows them to be considered in a broader context of currintellectual controversies. In addition, the book explicitly addresses the fundamental question raised by Paul Shepard's work: What can we do to recreate a life more in tune with our genetic roots? In this book, Paul Shepard presents concrete suggestions for fostering the kinds of ecological settings and cultural practices that are optimal for human health and well-being.
    Coming Home to the Pleistocene is a valuable book for those familiar with the life and work of Paul Shepard, as well as for new readers seeking an accessible introduction to and overview of his thought.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIsland Press
    Release dateApr 16, 2013
    ISBN9781597268479
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Coming Home to the Pleistocene

    3.5/5

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    • 1/5
      A post-modern Rousseau on steroids.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      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.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      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).

      1 person found this helpful