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Coming Home to the Pleistocene
"When we grasp fully that the best expressions of our humanity were not invented by civilization but by cultures that preceded it, that the natural world is not only a set of constraints but of contexts within which we can more fully realize our dreams, we will be on the way to a long overdue reconciliation between opposites which are of our own making." --from 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, Paul Shepard returned repeatedly to his guiding theme, the central tenet of his 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. Completed just before his death in the summer of 1996, it represents the culmination of Paul Shepard's life work and constitutes the clearest, most accessible 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 current intellectual controversies. In addition, the book explicitly addresses the fundamental question raised by Paul Shepard's 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.
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, Paul Shepard returned repeatedly to his guiding theme, the central tenet of his 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. Completed just before his death in the summer of 1996, it represents the culmination of Paul Shepard's life work and constitutes the clearest, most accessible 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 current intellectual controversies. In addition, the book explicitly addresses the fundamental question raised by Paul Shepard's 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.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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March 26, 2015
Paul Shepard (1925-1996) was a human ecologist and a turbocharged original thinker who spent his life trying to understand (a) how ordinary animals like us managed to evolve into a highly destructive swarm, and (b) what we could do to correct this. Genetic evolution is the primary engine of change for all forms of life, except humans. With humans, history and culture have changed us far more, and much faster.
Shepard’s research came to conclusions that did not thrill the stodgy professors of mainstream academia. He was more or less dismissed as a nutjob. Most of his fame came after he died, when a new generation of fresh minds discovered an underappreciated genius. His masterpiece, Coming Home to the Pleistocene, summed up the scholarly pilgrimage of his life. He wrote it as cancer was drawing the curtains on his journey.
The Pleistocene epoch was the era of ice ages. It began between 2.6 and 1.6 million years ago (definitions vary), and concluded about 11,700 years ago. It was during this time that the hominid line slowly evolved into Homo sapiens. The Upper (or Late) Pleistocene spanned from 126,000 to 11,700 years ago, and it was the zenith of humankind, Shepard concluded. Then, the weather warmed up and stabilized, farmers and herders fell out of the sky, and all hell broke loose.
The frantic 10,000-year whirlwind that transformed healthy wild foragers into berserk* consumers is a mere eye blink in the long human voyage. Our genome is mostly unchanged from the Pleistocene, but the cultures of civilization have mutated into a snowballing catastrophe. (*Old Norse tales described berserkers, warriors who became so possessed with battle rage that they couldn’t turn it off. They killed everyone in sight, including family and friends.)
Back in the Pleistocene, our wild ancestors lived in a sacred world where everything, both animate and inanimate, was spiritually alive. They were healthy, strong, and had a nutritious diet. They lived in small groups, and were skilled at cooperation, conflict resolution, and sharing. Women were not second-class. Folks spent their entire lives in Big Mama Nature’s magnificent cathedral.
Wild people were highly attuned to their ecosystem. They paid acute attention to every scent, sound, and flicker. Because they were both predators and prey, survival required them to pay complete attention to reality, all the time. Unlike the human livestock in corporate cubicle farms, our wild ancestors were intensely alive, and they lived authentically, in the manner for which evolution had fine-tuned them. Even today, all newborns are wild animals, expecting to spend their lives in a wild world. Sadly, every critter in the cubicle farm has the time-proven genes of Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, but not their time-proven culture — a profound deviation.
Shepard increasingly comprehended the tragedy of what had been lost: “Through writing and contemplation over the years, I have somehow bonded firmly to those ancient ancestors, their society and ecology, and this kinship has guided my writing and thinking.” He spent his boyhood hunting and fishing in rural Missouri. Later he spent two decades in Los Angeles, and residing in a super-nightmare undoubtedly sharpened his perceptions of modernity’s pathology.
With the arrival of agriculture, folks shifted from being nature, to controlling nature. We became dependent on the products of domestication, and population clusters swelled and bloated. Domestication created “a catastrophic biology of nutritional deficiencies, alternating feast and famine, health and epidemic, peace and social conflict, all set in millennial rhythms of slowly collapsing ecosystems.”
Most animals have numerous offspring that mature rapidly, with few surviving to adulthood. Humans have few offspring, we mature slowly, and our lives pass through many phases. Wild cultures guided people through these phases, so that they could smoothly move down the path, living in balance from birth to death. Today, 8-year olds spend much of their time surrounded by other 8-year olds. In wild communities, they normally lived amidst people of all ages. Every day was lived in the presence of the extended family. Grandma and grandpa were never far away, nor were aunties and uncles.
Shepard believed that modern cultures do an especially terrible job at guiding newborns through their first two years, and through the crucial transition from adolescence to adulthood. When a phase is not successfully completed, this failure can permanently arrest the development process. “We slide into adult infantility and its neurotic symptoms,” a widespread problem in this day and age. Many never develop a mature sense of social responsibility or emotional stability. Imagine jamming 14 million Pleistocene hunter-gatherers into the culture of twenty-first century Los Angeles.
Shepard’s tour visited a wide variety of other topics. His analysis of pastoralism gave me quite a thump. Domestication replaced intelligent and powerful elk and deer with “total potato-heads” like cattle and sheep. Potato-heads were not sacred wild beings worthy of respect, they were just personal property — status tokens — the bedrock foundation of every insane society. The more potato-heads you own, the bigger man you are. Nothing was more important than status, and it was impossible to have too much.
Once herders discovered the thrill of having enormous sweaty hairy horses between their legs, the age of warriors rose to great heights. Mighty mounted warriors raided other camps to swipe their potato-heads, killing anyone who objected. They also welcomed visiting raiders with spears, arrows, and impolite remarks.
When the Navajo acquired potato-heads from the Spanish, their traditional foraging culture was destroyed, according to James Mischke, a social scientist at Diné College. Horses provided high mobility, and the raiding game led to an era of devastating tribal warfare. “The rise at that time of the hero/warrior was far more disastrous for Navajo society than the advent of colonial militarism two centuries later.”
Eventually, the lords of the cavalry joined up with the lords of civilization to conquer vast empires of status tokens. Captured people were penned and exploited. No settlement was ever safe from the raids of mounted warriors. Consequently, humans were reduced helpless flocks of sheep that required the protection of vigilant shepherds.
The Judeo-Christian culture was born in a pastoral world. In my digital Bible, the words “flock” and “horse” each appear 100 times, and “shepherd” appears 83 times. “As I live, saith the Lord GOD, surely because my flock became a prey, and my flock became meat to every beast of the field, because there was no shepherd…” (Ezekiel 34:8).
Our wild Pleistocene ancestors needed no shepherds, because their world was not roaring mad. They were safe. There were no hordes of mounted warriors to live in fear of, just assorted local predators.
This book is juicy because it presents us with ideas that are contrary to almost everything we believe — at a time when our crazy culture is ravaging the planet. Shepard rips our worldview inside out, and the shocking result presents a reasonable imitation of coherence. Is it possible that our modern consumer wonderland is not, in fact, paradise? Could there really be better ways to live? Are we mentally capable of wrapping our heads around other modes of perception?
Shepard clearly understood that it was impossible for us to march out of our freak show malls and promptly return to a Pleistocene way of life, but he did have powerful dreams that we could heal over time. Right now, we could begin recovering forgotten social principles and spiritual insights. Right now, we could begin weaning ourselves from addictions and illusions.
He knew that all humans share the same Pleistocene genome, and that our genetic memories all trace back to a common ancestral culture in Africa. Long-term human survival requires that our cultures reintegrate with nature. It’s important to understand how we got lost, and where we came from. Shepard tosses us a lump of hopium: “We humans are instinctive culture makers; given the pieces, the culture will reshape itself.” That would be nice!
Shepard’s research came to conclusions that did not thrill the stodgy professors of mainstream academia. He was more or less dismissed as a nutjob. Most of his fame came after he died, when a new generation of fresh minds discovered an underappreciated genius. His masterpiece, Coming Home to the Pleistocene, summed up the scholarly pilgrimage of his life. He wrote it as cancer was drawing the curtains on his journey.
The Pleistocene epoch was the era of ice ages. It began between 2.6 and 1.6 million years ago (definitions vary), and concluded about 11,700 years ago. It was during this time that the hominid line slowly evolved into Homo sapiens. The Upper (or Late) Pleistocene spanned from 126,000 to 11,700 years ago, and it was the zenith of humankind, Shepard concluded. Then, the weather warmed up and stabilized, farmers and herders fell out of the sky, and all hell broke loose.
The frantic 10,000-year whirlwind that transformed healthy wild foragers into berserk* consumers is a mere eye blink in the long human voyage. Our genome is mostly unchanged from the Pleistocene, but the cultures of civilization have mutated into a snowballing catastrophe. (*Old Norse tales described berserkers, warriors who became so possessed with battle rage that they couldn’t turn it off. They killed everyone in sight, including family and friends.)
Back in the Pleistocene, our wild ancestors lived in a sacred world where everything, both animate and inanimate, was spiritually alive. They were healthy, strong, and had a nutritious diet. They lived in small groups, and were skilled at cooperation, conflict resolution, and sharing. Women were not second-class. Folks spent their entire lives in Big Mama Nature’s magnificent cathedral.
Wild people were highly attuned to their ecosystem. They paid acute attention to every scent, sound, and flicker. Because they were both predators and prey, survival required them to pay complete attention to reality, all the time. Unlike the human livestock in corporate cubicle farms, our wild ancestors were intensely alive, and they lived authentically, in the manner for which evolution had fine-tuned them. Even today, all newborns are wild animals, expecting to spend their lives in a wild world. Sadly, every critter in the cubicle farm has the time-proven genes of Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, but not their time-proven culture — a profound deviation.
Shepard increasingly comprehended the tragedy of what had been lost: “Through writing and contemplation over the years, I have somehow bonded firmly to those ancient ancestors, their society and ecology, and this kinship has guided my writing and thinking.” He spent his boyhood hunting and fishing in rural Missouri. Later he spent two decades in Los Angeles, and residing in a super-nightmare undoubtedly sharpened his perceptions of modernity’s pathology.
With the arrival of agriculture, folks shifted from being nature, to controlling nature. We became dependent on the products of domestication, and population clusters swelled and bloated. Domestication created “a catastrophic biology of nutritional deficiencies, alternating feast and famine, health and epidemic, peace and social conflict, all set in millennial rhythms of slowly collapsing ecosystems.”
Most animals have numerous offspring that mature rapidly, with few surviving to adulthood. Humans have few offspring, we mature slowly, and our lives pass through many phases. Wild cultures guided people through these phases, so that they could smoothly move down the path, living in balance from birth to death. Today, 8-year olds spend much of their time surrounded by other 8-year olds. In wild communities, they normally lived amidst people of all ages. Every day was lived in the presence of the extended family. Grandma and grandpa were never far away, nor were aunties and uncles.
Shepard believed that modern cultures do an especially terrible job at guiding newborns through their first two years, and through the crucial transition from adolescence to adulthood. When a phase is not successfully completed, this failure can permanently arrest the development process. “We slide into adult infantility and its neurotic symptoms,” a widespread problem in this day and age. Many never develop a mature sense of social responsibility or emotional stability. Imagine jamming 14 million Pleistocene hunter-gatherers into the culture of twenty-first century Los Angeles.
Shepard’s tour visited a wide variety of other topics. His analysis of pastoralism gave me quite a thump. Domestication replaced intelligent and powerful elk and deer with “total potato-heads” like cattle and sheep. Potato-heads were not sacred wild beings worthy of respect, they were just personal property — status tokens — the bedrock foundation of every insane society. The more potato-heads you own, the bigger man you are. Nothing was more important than status, and it was impossible to have too much.
Once herders discovered the thrill of having enormous sweaty hairy horses between their legs, the age of warriors rose to great heights. Mighty mounted warriors raided other camps to swipe their potato-heads, killing anyone who objected. They also welcomed visiting raiders with spears, arrows, and impolite remarks.
When the Navajo acquired potato-heads from the Spanish, their traditional foraging culture was destroyed, according to James Mischke, a social scientist at Diné College. Horses provided high mobility, and the raiding game led to an era of devastating tribal warfare. “The rise at that time of the hero/warrior was far more disastrous for Navajo society than the advent of colonial militarism two centuries later.”
Eventually, the lords of the cavalry joined up with the lords of civilization to conquer vast empires of status tokens. Captured people were penned and exploited. No settlement was ever safe from the raids of mounted warriors. Consequently, humans were reduced helpless flocks of sheep that required the protection of vigilant shepherds.
The Judeo-Christian culture was born in a pastoral world. In my digital Bible, the words “flock” and “horse” each appear 100 times, and “shepherd” appears 83 times. “As I live, saith the Lord GOD, surely because my flock became a prey, and my flock became meat to every beast of the field, because there was no shepherd…” (Ezekiel 34:8).
Our wild Pleistocene ancestors needed no shepherds, because their world was not roaring mad. They were safe. There were no hordes of mounted warriors to live in fear of, just assorted local predators.
This book is juicy because it presents us with ideas that are contrary to almost everything we believe — at a time when our crazy culture is ravaging the planet. Shepard rips our worldview inside out, and the shocking result presents a reasonable imitation of coherence. Is it possible that our modern consumer wonderland is not, in fact, paradise? Could there really be better ways to live? Are we mentally capable of wrapping our heads around other modes of perception?
Shepard clearly understood that it was impossible for us to march out of our freak show malls and promptly return to a Pleistocene way of life, but he did have powerful dreams that we could heal over time. Right now, we could begin recovering forgotten social principles and spiritual insights. Right now, we could begin weaning ourselves from addictions and illusions.
He knew that all humans share the same Pleistocene genome, and that our genetic memories all trace back to a common ancestral culture in Africa. Long-term human survival requires that our cultures reintegrate with nature. It’s important to understand how we got lost, and where we came from. Shepard tosses us a lump of hopium: “We humans are instinctive culture makers; given the pieces, the culture will reshape itself.” That would be nice!
July 11, 2008
In all honesty, this book changed my view of the world. It changed how I think about human society and its relationship to the rest of nature. It changed how I think about my body and the right way to live in the world. I had more epiphanies reading this book than I have had reading any other book.
When I tried to explain the thesis of the book to my father four years ago, he thought it was ridiculous. I told him he had to read it for himself and he consented. It instantly became his favorite book. He read it through numerous times, bought a dozen copies and gave them to his closest friends. In the last three years of his life, my dad wrote a kind of memoir, largely about fly fishing and what it meant to him. Paul Shepard's ideas and arguments were everywhere in my father's writing. If you let it, this book will change your life. But it is a book you must come to with an open mind.
When I tried to explain the thesis of the book to my father four years ago, he thought it was ridiculous. I told him he had to read it for himself and he consented. It instantly became his favorite book. He read it through numerous times, bought a dozen copies and gave them to his closest friends. In the last three years of his life, my dad wrote a kind of memoir, largely about fly fishing and what it meant to him. Paul Shepard's ideas and arguments were everywhere in my father's writing. If you let it, this book will change your life. But it is a book you must come to with an open mind.
October 8, 2009
"The social, ecological and ideological characteristics natural to our humanity are to be found in the lives of foragers." Shepard's strong basic idea is that the hunter/gatherer existence of our Pleistocene ancestors more closely matched, or responded better to, what our genetic, biological, physiological and psychological evolution has prepared us for.
Our genetic inheritance doesn't directly prescribe specific social and cultural arrangements, he argues, but it does set limits. And these limitations have been ignored by our adoption of agrarian, and then technological-industrial, civilization. Some may jeer at Shepard's strong indictments of the associated evils of modern mass society (I am in sympathy with them though). But it would be tough to argue other points of his - like the relationship between our agrarian/domesticated diet and associated ill health effects, compared with the hunter/gatherer diet more suited to our nature. He doesn't idealize hunter/gatherers to suggest that they were in every respect ideal - just that they are better suited to our nature in some crucial ways.
I also appreciated the brilliant geneaology of sorts Shepard does in linking the fear of death, domination, male chauvinism, sexism and violence all together with the evolution of agrarian and pastoral societies and the monotheistic religions that arise to justify such an aberrant creation.
Shepard is a real genius. His essay on the evolution of human vision - not in this book - is one of the best science essays I've ever read. This, his last book, arrays a lifetime time of investigation and reflection in anthropology, archeaology, art history, biology, natural history, sociology and psychology into a powerful argument for the reclaiming of our Pleistocene heritage. Much strong wisdom too.
Our genetic inheritance doesn't directly prescribe specific social and cultural arrangements, he argues, but it does set limits. And these limitations have been ignored by our adoption of agrarian, and then technological-industrial, civilization. Some may jeer at Shepard's strong indictments of the associated evils of modern mass society (I am in sympathy with them though). But it would be tough to argue other points of his - like the relationship between our agrarian/domesticated diet and associated ill health effects, compared with the hunter/gatherer diet more suited to our nature. He doesn't idealize hunter/gatherers to suggest that they were in every respect ideal - just that they are better suited to our nature in some crucial ways.
I also appreciated the brilliant geneaology of sorts Shepard does in linking the fear of death, domination, male chauvinism, sexism and violence all together with the evolution of agrarian and pastoral societies and the monotheistic religions that arise to justify such an aberrant creation.
Shepard is a real genius. His essay on the evolution of human vision - not in this book - is one of the best science essays I've ever read. This, his last book, arrays a lifetime time of investigation and reflection in anthropology, archeaology, art history, biology, natural history, sociology and psychology into a powerful argument for the reclaiming of our Pleistocene heritage. Much strong wisdom too.
September 21, 2013
This book is extremely profound. It should be considered one of the primers of anti-civ theory, along with Daniel Quinn and Derrick Jensen's stuff, on a list of books to introduce people to the concepts, before they dive into the less accessible authors like Zerzan, Mumford or Kaczynski.
One of the best parts for me was the list of ways we can change the way we live in order to be in harmony with the wildness in our genomes. I hear so many people who refuse to consider the addiction to civilization complain that nobody has an answer to how we can change. Well, bullshit; it's right here in the book. Makes me want to pick up my family and move to the wilderness somewhere so we can start living like it right away. Unfortunately until the systems that oppress the world are dismantled, it's not going to be possible to do this.
One of the best parts for me was the list of ways we can change the way we live in order to be in harmony with the wildness in our genomes. I hear so many people who refuse to consider the addiction to civilization complain that nobody has an answer to how we can change. Well, bullshit; it's right here in the book. Makes me want to pick up my family and move to the wilderness somewhere so we can start living like it right away. Unfortunately until the systems that oppress the world are dismantled, it's not going to be possible to do this.
August 21, 2019
A very interesting book, looking at various aspects of the human condition vis-a-vis the Pleistocene.
Basically, the author asserts that the human race has not evolved from what we were physically at that time, and then extrapolates to the psychological. He makes some very telling points -- to be chewed over and considered.
Basically, the author asserts that the human race has not evolved from what we were physically at that time, and then extrapolates to the psychological. He makes some very telling points -- to be chewed over and considered.
July 19, 2018
Profound and pragmatic analysis of our roots and present path. Still appropriate and relevant directions to explore.
“We have become accustomed to identifying a wide range of physical and social disorders—everything from war to ethnic intolerance, stress and trauma disorders, epidemic disease, and the vague dissatisfactions that lead to addictions and suicide— as weaknesses in the social, political, or technological order, rather than as evidence of a deep, ecological disassociation from our genetic core.”
“Centralized power is the great curse of history”
“We have become accustomed to identifying a wide range of physical and social disorders—everything from war to ethnic intolerance, stress and trauma disorders, epidemic disease, and the vague dissatisfactions that lead to addictions and suicide— as weaknesses in the social, political, or technological order, rather than as evidence of a deep, ecological disassociation from our genetic core.”
“Centralized power is the great curse of history”
August 10, 2025
I loved reading this book and all the different things that it gave me the opportunity to think about.
It's the culmination of all Shephard's thinking and writing over the course of his career. The book was actually completed on his deathbed with the help of his wife. With its publication, his last message to help us understand our place in nature, he died in peace surrounded by his family.
The way we live now is so new, a tiny blip in our human history, and our way of life is so foreign to our bodies, which are still the bodies of the hunter-gatherers of the Pleistocene. He points out which things are harming us, like an industrial diet and an attitude toward nature of conquest and exploitation. He also gives advice for small adjustments we can make that can help us have a more meaningful existence on Earth.
It's the culmination of all Shephard's thinking and writing over the course of his career. The book was actually completed on his deathbed with the help of his wife. With its publication, his last message to help us understand our place in nature, he died in peace surrounded by his family.
The way we live now is so new, a tiny blip in our human history, and our way of life is so foreign to our bodies, which are still the bodies of the hunter-gatherers of the Pleistocene. He points out which things are harming us, like an industrial diet and an attitude toward nature of conquest and exploitation. He also gives advice for small adjustments we can make that can help us have a more meaningful existence on Earth.
Read
June 10, 2026While the central argument of the book is quite binary-minded, the author draws compelling comparisons between the hunter-gatherer way of life and modern, agricultural, or nomadic-pastoralist practices. I gained countless takeaways from this book, both intellectual and inspirational. This book makes me want to live in a makeshift cottage at a forest edge, hunting and gathering as a living.
April 15, 2019
did not agree with the argument, but it is a good thought experiment
October 18, 2025
I am a fan of Paul Shepard. He is a critic of modernity, and discusses all we lost as human beings as we moved from the Pleistocene into the Neolithic, Bronze, Iron and finally the Anhropocene....
April 18, 2023
I very much like this work by Paul Shepard. This book is his last work and it’s a good introduction to his thinking. Showing how our heritage as the descendants of hunter-gatherer cultures, our rather the denial of this fact still haunts us and our relationship to the earth we inhabit to this very day.
Some of his views are perhaps a bit too stereotypical. Hunter-gatherers aren’t always peaceful and in harmony with their environment while not all farmers/pastoralists are warlike and destroying the ecology of the places they inhabit. But still I couldn’t agree more with the basic message of this book: We won’t regain our sanity as a species or fix the broken relationship to this earth and all the other lifeforms inhabiting it until we remember where we come from as a species, that even though we like to call ourselves “modern” humans, our bodies and perhaps even more importantly our minds are still working mostly the same way as tens of thousands of years ago, when we were hunter-gatherers living in the natural environment we adapted to during the course of our evolution. Now well over two decades after his death, Paul Shepard‘s message is needed more than ever, given that environmentalism these days is getting ever more focused on superficial pseudo-solutions that do more harm than good like so-called renewable energy and other such nonsense that doesn’t address the root causes of how we got in this situation in the first place.
Some of his views are perhaps a bit too stereotypical. Hunter-gatherers aren’t always peaceful and in harmony with their environment while not all farmers/pastoralists are warlike and destroying the ecology of the places they inhabit. But still I couldn’t agree more with the basic message of this book: We won’t regain our sanity as a species or fix the broken relationship to this earth and all the other lifeforms inhabiting it until we remember where we come from as a species, that even though we like to call ourselves “modern” humans, our bodies and perhaps even more importantly our minds are still working mostly the same way as tens of thousands of years ago, when we were hunter-gatherers living in the natural environment we adapted to during the course of our evolution. Now well over two decades after his death, Paul Shepard‘s message is needed more than ever, given that environmentalism these days is getting ever more focused on superficial pseudo-solutions that do more harm than good like so-called renewable energy and other such nonsense that doesn’t address the root causes of how we got in this situation in the first place.
September 2, 2013
Not sure what to make of this book, but thought provoking enough that I will continue to reflect on it for some time anyway. I have been working my way through some influential books in the environmental movement and having seen Paul Shepard's name several times I decided to start with this book. Clearly a brilliant and learned man, I can't help but wonder if his ideas about the superiority of the hunter-forager roots of our species over the corrupting influence of agricultural and pastoral societies isn't a bit idealized. Looking into the past beyond 10,000 years of history almost inherently leads to the involvement of the imagination and the influence of the imagine-er. Comparison with modern day hunter-foragers is our closest approximation with what might have been. Certainly thought provoking and well written.
March 14, 2010
Read this after Nature and Madness. Coming Home to the Pleistocene seems to be Shepards most complete and mature book. From pg. 136, "Would it not then be incredible indeed, if savannas and forest groves, flowers and animals, the multiplicity of environmental components to which our bodies were originally shaped, were not, at the very least, still important to us? Would not such a concept of 'nature' be a major part of what might be called a basic optimum human environment?" From pg 143, "The savage mind is ours! We may be deformed by our circumstances, like obese raccoons or crowded, demented rats, but as a species we have in us the call of the wild."
August 8, 2011
The best one for a long time! Very deep and clear description of how humans probably lived their lives and saw themselves in the world before civilisation and how and why that changed with agriculture, domestication and authoritarian society-building. Lots of focus on how different aspects of the world came to have different meanings, things like the human relationship with time, death, earth and other humans. It cleared out lots of things for me. Lots of perspectives useful for seeing clearer on what kind of animal humans are today what we should do to get out of slavery and alienation.
December 28, 2012
Interesting, but a bit hard to follow the thread always, a bit bitty and jumps around a lot. Many interesting opinions / theories which are obviously the authors, but not necessarily adequately backed up by references or shown to be valid in the text. maybe on needs to read his other books to get a better perspective, this one was edited after he died by his wife. Now I have ordered one of her books, Florence R Krall which sounds and reads (on Google books)as really interesting and well written - Ecotone: "Wayfaring on the Margins (Suny Series, Feminist Theory in Education)".
April 26, 2012
A great introduction to an author that anyone who has thought deeply about our relationship to nature must read. One cannot think about wildness without having explored Paul Shepard's lifetime of contemplation of the subject.
March 22, 2011
Loved it.
January 7, 2026
Fascinating, terrifying and revealing.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews