In this conversation at the Review of Democracy, Stefanos Geroulanos – author of The Invention of Prehistory. Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins – sketches the major ways the story of humanity’s emergence has been conceived over the past two and a half centuries; shows how such conceptions can shed light on the history of the modern world; discusses what has made this generative intellectualtradition also one of the most ruinous; and reflects on what our fashionable prehistories may reveal about the kind of world we currently live in.

Stefanos Geroulanos is the Director of the Remarque Institute and a Professor of History at New York University.

The Invention of Prehistory. Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Originsis published by W.W.Norton.

The conversation has been conducted by Ferenc Laczó. The audio recording has been edited by Lucie Hunter.