In what may be his boldest and most controversial book, Paul Shepard presents an account of human behavior and ecology in light of our past. In it, he contends that agriculture is responsible for our ecological decline and looks to the hunting and gathering lifestyle as a model more closely in tune with our essential nature. Shepard advocates affirming the profound and beautiful nature of the hunter and gatherer, redefining agriculture and combining technology with hunting and gathering to recover a livable environment and peaceful society.
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Published in 1982, 1973, and 1978, respectively, Shepard's titles employ animals in order to further the study of humans. His theories incorporate elements from nature as well as from mythology, literature, sociology, and numerous other concentrations.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"Paul Shepard [is] an exceptionally clear thinker who is also a lucid and exhilarating writer. . . . His work is valuable but very urgent, shining in the sun like the tip of the vast iceberg of knowlege and reflection that supports it."--Peter Matthiessen
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45 of 48 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Paul Shepard is the kind of author that should be read over and over again. Each time through, you will pick up more, and slowly your view of the world will change. In this book, Shepard weaves together anthropology, psychology, social criticism, and prehistory to paint a picture of what we used to be, what we are now, and what we can be in the future. More specifically, Shepard urges us to recapture the form of hunter-gathering. This is not to say that we can turn back the clock of history and go back to the caves. Rather, he is espousing a closer contact with the natural world, which is the only thing that can trigger the crucial psychological transitions that make up our lifecycle. Without this kind of exposure to the Otherness of the real world, we remain locked in adolescence and even pre-adolescence, unable to maturely experience the people and places around us. Read this book, then read "Nature and Madness", then read his other books --- then REREAD them, over and over. His stuff is that good.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
By Ben J. Ranes
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is my favorite book at this point in my life (32 yrs)--have re-read it cover to cover 3 or 4 times. I feel as though I'm always learning, or being gracefully reminded of, something new when I move through the pages.
The writing, which indeed is an anthropological and physiological exploration of modern man and modern individualism, is insanely thoughtful and enriched. One can derive life altering insights to human behavior in every paragraph, seemingly....and although the subject matter will swing from the physical design of the eye, to primate behavior, to meditations of probable ancestral hunting lifestyles, the reader is never left with a disjointed impression of what he is trying to instill (which is self evident "us-knowledge").....Shepard ostensibly explores the ideas of his own mind, along with snipits of the (so called) anthropological record, in such a way as to say, "Hey, evaluate this stuff on your own, intelligent being."--as though playing an amanuensis for history and nature themselves.
Shepard is somewhat popularly catologued as a "futurist", though thats not the primary idea I'm left with in having read 4 of his books (in fact, I esteem this tag as being a slippery way of certain authorities in trying to distract one from his more meaningfull lessons). Essentially, this book is a lesson in Rhetoric (big R)--done poetically--and one that will appeal to anyone naturally curious about the big questions relating to human nature or natural history.
This book may also appeal to anyone sick of using a fiberglass compound bow, or anyone with slight to moderate anarchist inclinations.
The writing, which indeed is an anthropological and physiological exploration of modern man and modern individualism, is insanely thoughtful and enriched. One can derive life altering insights to human behavior in every paragraph, seemingly....and although the subject matter will swing from the physical design of the eye, to primate behavior, to meditations of probable ancestral hunting lifestyles, the reader is never left with a disjointed impression of what he is trying to instill (which is self evident "us-knowledge").....Shepard ostensibly explores the ideas of his own mind, along with snipits of the (so called) anthropological record, in such a way as to say, "Hey, evaluate this stuff on your own, intelligent being."--as though playing an amanuensis for history and nature themselves.
Shepard is somewhat popularly catologued as a "futurist", though thats not the primary idea I'm left with in having read 4 of his books (in fact, I esteem this tag as being a slippery way of certain authorities in trying to distract one from his more meaningfull lessons). Essentially, this book is a lesson in Rhetoric (big R)--done poetically--and one that will appeal to anyone naturally curious about the big questions relating to human nature or natural history.
This book may also appeal to anyone sick of using a fiberglass compound bow, or anyone with slight to moderate anarchist inclinations.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By .fgd
Format:Paperback
I dug this book out of storage having read it 20 yrs ago. Its ideas still resonate as book I loved plan to re-read it.
It makes sense . That farming/ neolithic era has only been around 10 000 but we as Man were around even 50 000 years before and 2 million as evolving hominids/ man-apes. So we must still be ingrained with a pre-farming psyche. What I always found very telling is how precocious cave-art is. As good as anything made today more over the sensitivity of line is within the realm of Fine-Art.
From farming revolution we are on the cusps of a new revolution in Man -the technological man. This book then is as revelant as ever if we are to stay grounded in Nature. Farming also invented currency -grain was the first money and stored wealth the building bricks of civilisation kings cities a class system to structure a more populous society-( indeed the caste system in India went hand in hand with over-population versus resources). Yet the neolithic age was not Enlightenied as it seperated man into " Eloi. and Morlocks" aka the peasants and ruling classes or sheep and predators to give us the horrors of working conditions in the Industrial revolution. Resulting in the invention of Communism in Russia and its fall-out of Socialist regulation in the west in thr first half of 20th century. Yet in modern times this imbance persists for example in the economic crisis caused by unregulated banking and tax payers money used to bail the banks out. One of Shepards ideas is nomadic hunter gatherer group was laid out on more communist principles of share alike. Civilzation never stopped war either with predators leading the sheep
into a bid for greater wealth or " grain" .But I digress. Many more insights in this book between past and present.
It is wise to take the bull by the horns in terms of how we are fundamentally wired because although the newly born lTechnology/Information age can indeed redress the faults of the Neolithic one ( for example by a demand for accountability / causes for an out-break of war through media coverage ) Paul Shepard outlines why farming never came near to gaurenteeing peace on earth. Pre-neolithic had more accountability within tribal groups and its members as individuals than thuggishly braining the other tribe from over the hill / stealing the women etc....We have erroneously stereo-typed pre-neolithic man is the point of " The Tender Carnivores". Further more as homogeneity increases in the modern world - it is in conflict with the innate tribalism in man. Media and Internet do this. Moreover the individual is diluted by an inability to digest/ concentrate represented by the present generation's lack of attention span to be able to read a book.If the tribe is delineated so is the worth of the individual according to Shepard. If Shepard flirts with communism of the tribe its not to be confused with travesty of Soviet Communism on the individual Is Communism doomed to fail in neolithic times. ?!
As a side line I cannot help mentioning the DVD. "How beer saved the world. " Apparently Man accidentlaly discovered fermentation of grain and its sophorific by-product . And this is what kick-started the Neolithic age rather than the more grim and sombre PBS programme on archeology exhorting Man's realisation he was more sacred than animals ( because of carvings found on plinths on the first ancient dwellings.) Totally plausible given how easy grain ferments
Inthe t
It makes sense . That farming/ neolithic era has only been around 10 000 but we as Man were around even 50 000 years before and 2 million as evolving hominids/ man-apes. So we must still be ingrained with a pre-farming psyche. What I always found very telling is how precocious cave-art is. As good as anything made today more over the sensitivity of line is within the realm of Fine-Art.
From farming revolution we are on the cusps of a new revolution in Man -the technological man. This book then is as revelant as ever if we are to stay grounded in Nature. Farming also invented currency -grain was the first money and stored wealth the building bricks of civilisation kings cities a class system to structure a more populous society-( indeed the caste system in India went hand in hand with over-population versus resources). Yet the neolithic age was not Enlightenied as it seperated man into " Eloi. and Morlocks" aka the peasants and ruling classes or sheep and predators to give us the horrors of working conditions in the Industrial revolution. Resulting in the invention of Communism in Russia and its fall-out of Socialist regulation in the west in thr first half of 20th century. Yet in modern times this imbance persists for example in the economic crisis caused by unregulated banking and tax payers money used to bail the banks out. One of Shepards ideas is nomadic hunter gatherer group was laid out on more communist principles of share alike. Civilzation never stopped war either with predators leading the sheep
into a bid for greater wealth or " grain" .But I digress. Many more insights in this book between past and present.
It is wise to take the bull by the horns in terms of how we are fundamentally wired because although the newly born lTechnology/Information age can indeed redress the faults of the Neolithic one ( for example by a demand for accountability / causes for an out-break of war through media coverage ) Paul Shepard outlines why farming never came near to gaurenteeing peace on earth. Pre-neolithic had more accountability within tribal groups and its members as individuals than thuggishly braining the other tribe from over the hill / stealing the women etc....We have erroneously stereo-typed pre-neolithic man is the point of " The Tender Carnivores". Further more as homogeneity increases in the modern world - it is in conflict with the innate tribalism in man. Media and Internet do this. Moreover the individual is diluted by an inability to digest/ concentrate represented by the present generation's lack of attention span to be able to read a book.If the tribe is delineated so is the worth of the individual according to Shepard. If Shepard flirts with communism of the tribe its not to be confused with travesty of Soviet Communism on the individual Is Communism doomed to fail in neolithic times. ?!
As a side line I cannot help mentioning the DVD. "How beer saved the world. " Apparently Man accidentlaly discovered fermentation of grain and its sophorific by-product . And this is what kick-started the Neolithic age rather than the more grim and sombre PBS programme on archeology exhorting Man's realisation he was more sacred than animals ( because of carvings found on plinths on the first ancient dwellings.) Totally plausible given how easy grain ferments
Inthe t
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