Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The climate of the past 100 000 years
- 3 Life in the ice age
- 4 The evolutionary implications of living with the ice age
- 5 Emerging from the ice age
- 6 Recorded history
- 7 Our climatic inheritance
- 8 The future
- Appendix Dating
- Glossary
- References
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - Our climatic inheritance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The climate of the past 100 000 years
- 3 Life in the ice age
- 4 The evolutionary implications of living with the ice age
- 5 Emerging from the ice age
- 6 Recorded history
- 7 Our climatic inheritance
- 8 The future
- Appendix Dating
- Glossary
- References
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
At the base of all these aristocratic races the predator is not to be mistaken, the splendorous blond beast, avidly impatient for plunder and victory.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), Zur Genealogie der MoralNietzsche's observation about the superiority of certain races is an anathema to modern political thinking on racial equality. This repudiation is not just a matter of political correctness, but reflects the fact that his ideas are wholly contrary to the evidence of genetic mapping presented in earlier chapters that shows how we are all so closely linked in terms of genetic origins. As Svante Pääbo, of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, recently observed in a review article (Pääbo, 2003), ‘[evidence] suggests that we expanded from a rather small African population. Thus, from a genomic perspective, we are all Africans, either living in Africa or in quite recent exile from Africa.’ Nevertheless, in exploring how modern humans and their social structures evolved from the depths of the ice age and how climate change may have left an indelible imprint on our make-up, we will need to consider the more violent aspects of human behaviour. So, while we can have no truck with Nietzsche's notions of ‘aristocratic races’, blond or otherwise, the issues of the ‘predator’ and of ‘victory and plunder’ have been a major feature of the analysis our prehistory and more recent history.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Climate Change in PrehistoryThe End of the Reign of Chaos, pp. 261 - 284Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005