Commentary: Why would anyone want a paleo diet? We’re desperate for half-truths about human origins
Can anyone offer a compelling, accurate story that explains the nature of humanity from its earliest origins? Scientist-intellectuals have tried to do so at least since the sci-fi author H.G. Wells struck gold in 1919 with “The Outline of History,” his influential attempt at telling “the whole story of man.” This effort endures as a trend. Jared Diamond, E.O. Wilson, Yuval Noah Harari, and David Graeber and David Wengrow are just some of the more recent authors to attempt grand accounts that veer from their professional training — and presume to explain human nature itself.
Offering as much entertainment as scientific truth, these books are often hits, met with breathless claims that they radically transform all we knew about humanity., counting and prominent among his apostles. It argues that cognition and language produce beliefs that are shared across large groups to enable cooperation. The book imagines humanity as simply conceiving a picture and acting to make it true — like a developer designing and releasing an app — and it ignores individuals’ divergent problems, societies, thoughts and lives.
