On Deep History and the Brain

It's an interesting introduction to a very wide topic. I'd consider this book to be more like a long essay. It delves for most of the time on why to consider this approach and what problems previous approaches have, more than what this approach actually is (which is left for the last couple of chapters). A good first step to delve into this topic. Again, an introduction.

Daniel Lord Smail is a historian at Harvard University. He is perhaps motivated to write this book because his father, John R. W. Smail was a professor of Southeast Asian history who, out of step with his times, taught an undergraduate course called "The Natural History of Man."I bought this book because it got a good review in Science, which is not known for its attention to the historian's craft. True to form, Smail is a fine writer who can put together a coherent argument, as is the case for his Chapter 2, which analyzes insightfully why historians generally believe history begins with settled agriculture, urban life, and the written record.Generally, however, this is a meandering, unfocused book that seems like the author's attempt to learn elementary paleontology, anthropology, brain science, and evolutionary psychology. There is no real history in the book, although there are good (if somewhat casual) introductions to modern sociobiology and neuroscience (especially the neurotransmitters and their role in human sociality). I especially liked his gentle but devastating critique of Evolutionary Psychology, of the sort that characterizes modern Homo sapiens as a "stone age mind in a modern skull."What is missing most from this book is what it's title promises: a deep history of human society as seen through the evolution of the human brain. Indeed, it is difficult to find such a deep history anywhere, and if it were to be written, it would have to be in the context of the evolution of craniates and vertebrates, of which our species is but one member.

This is a fairly short book that Harvard professor of history Daniel Smail describes as a series of connected essays. It is essentially an argument to include all of human history, not just written history, in academic survey courses and textbooks. Most of the book is an interesting historiographical survey of how historians essentially ignore "pre-history"; the problems with periodization; and a post-modern rejection of Christian Universal History metanarratives which are stealthily still lurking in much of western secular historiography to this day.Smail suggests using evolution as a new approach - one idea, he suggests, is that changes in brain chemistry, from external and internal forces, play a role in shaping human history. For example the widespread adoption of caffeine in Europe in the 17th century altered Europeans brain chemistry and thus the track of history. Similar investigations could be done with "pre-historic" periods. Smail doesn't go into many specifics, this is a concept book about how to approach history, not a definitive scientific analysis or conclusion - it is part of the larger ongoing discussions on how the ideas of evolution can be applied scientifically to the humanities (history, literature, etc) . Overall I was intellectually stimulated throughout and greatly enjoyed the ideas and perspectives, Smail is well versed in western historiography and the philosophy of history. Even if you are not convinced by the titles premise (almost a sort of hook), discussed in only one chapter, there is a lot to learn in this short but pithy work.

First-rate historiography. A clear, convincing, and important argument for abandoning the idea that historians must begin their accounts of human history with the earliest available documents produced by humans, leaving "prehistory" for archaeologists, anthropologists, and biologists. Smail argues that there is much to be gained, intellectually, from asking historians to apply our talents as well to assembling an account of the history of the species from the earliest traces of it, whether deliberately recorded or not.