The Origins of Europeans and Their Pre-Historic Inventiveness

Sound Bite

This book highlights the crucial role that European ancestors played in human development and focuses on key stages of human progress, technological and social. Especially in the last 50,000 years, Europeans pioneered far-reaching changes in the way peoples around the world lived, which even affected their physical appearance. Europeans in particular had a hard time surviving, but it was overcoming these great challenges that set them apart.

About the Book

Who are we and where on earth do we come from? Scientists have traced back human ancestry to tropical Africa and small primates living in trees. But what happened after that has been hotly debated, and the accepted explanations have led down blind alleys.

In The Origins of Europeans and Their Pre-historic Inventiveness, author Neil Harrison presents a comprehensive re-examination of human evolution, arguing that many long-accepted theories fail a basic "sanity test". The book challenges the prevailing view of Neanderthals as a primitive, evolutionary dead-end and questions the widespread assurance with which ideas like the "Out of Africa II" theory have been promoted.

Harrison builds his case from first principles, relying on archaeological and scientific evidence to trace the 6-million-year journey of our ancestors. His central argument is that the harsh, rapidly changing climate of Ice Age Europe was not merely a backdrop but a crucial catalyst for human development. Faced with extreme challenges, European ancestors were driven to innovate at an unprecedented pace, pioneering far-reaching technological and social changes that affected their way of life and even their physical appearance.

Covering developments from the first stone tools to the sophisticated art of the Magdalenian period, this work offers a detailed and thought-provoking account of our deep past. It presents the story of European prehistory as one of resilience and extraordinary inventiveness, where survival in the most difficult of circumstances set humanity on a new and transformative path.

Anyone interested in European, Eurasian or Native American ancestry should read this book to discover how we really came to be who we are: a story as gripping as traditional versions such as Adam and Eve, Popul Vuh and Gaia.