On Deep History And The Brain

by Smail, Daniel Lord

• ISBN13: 9780520252899
• ISBN10: 0520252896
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-11-05
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

When does history begin? What characterizes it? This brilliant and beautifully written book dissolves the logic of a beginning based on writing, civilization, or historical consciousness and offers a model for a history that escapes the continuing grip of the Judeo-Christian time frame. Daniel Lord Smail argues that, in the wake of the decade of the brain and the bestselling historical work of scientists like Jared Diamond, the time has come for fundamentally new ways of thinking about our past. He shows how recent work in evolution and paleohistory makes it possible to join the deep past with the recent past and abandon, once and for all, the idea of prehistory. Making an enormous literature accessible to the general reader, he lays out a bold new case for bringing neuroscience and neurobiology into the realm of history.

Author Biography

Daniel Lord Smail is Professor of History at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Introduction: Toward Reunion in History	p. 1
The Grip of Sacred History	p. 12
Resistance	p. 40
Between Darwin and Lamarck	p. 74
The New Neurohistory	p. 112
Civilization and Psychotropy	p. 157
Epilogue: Looking Ahead	p. 190
Notes	p. 203
Bibliography of Works Cited	p. 229
Index	p. 247
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