The Human Reality: A Reinterpretation of Our Origins and Evolution by Peter Prew

‘[This book]…is one of great importance and will have a profound effect upon the civilized world.’ Ian Player (Director of the International Wilderness Leadership Foundation) ‘I was impressed…beautifully written.’ Arthur Koestler ‘The book is an immensely ambitious one. It…should be read by every serious and thoughtful person.’ Robert Molteno (Editor, Zed Books) In stark contrast to the usual view of human evolution as a progressive Ascent of Man from a primitive state to one of sophisticated and comfortable civilization, the book ‘The Human Reality – A Reinterpretation of Our Origins and Evolution’ views the development of Homo sapiens after the Mesolithic period (some 10-12,000 years BP) as a dangerous degeneration and effectual re-evolution into what, in reality, constitutes almost a different species. The author calls it Homo degener, and believes the change occurred as a result of the adaptation of certain hunter-gatherer peoples to a primitive agriculture, which transformed them from nomadic free-ranging peoples, living harmoniously in nature, to sedentary farmers waging perpetual war against nature. Their construction of stratified societies, ‘pyramids of power’ comprising controlling head, fighting arms and cultivating hands and feet, resembled giant human beings which, unlike Homo sapiens, had no ecological niche. This book traces the historical development and progress of these re-evolutionary (or anti-evolutionary) composite animals, throughout the world, spreading tyranny and exploitation across a wild environment itself conducive to freedom and freedom from exploitation. The author concludes that humanity is now on the verge of a self-made catastrophe – a retribution of affronted Nature – which can be avoided only if we begin to return the land to those few remaining hunter-gatherer peoples who alone are the true friends of the Earth, and seek to learn from them instead of arrogantly ignoring or destroying them in favour of our exotic kind.