New History Association has published in Finnish a book titled “The Birth of the Human Genus, Human, and Society”. It’s the first part of a planned series of works “A Proposal for a New History of Humankind”. The author, Pertti Koskela, is a researcher, writer and translator. The English translation of the book is in progress.
A more detailed introduction to this book in Finnish here: Uutuuskirja ihmisen synnystä kysyy: keitä me olemme?
Pertti Koskela:
The Birth of the Human Genus, Society and Modern Humans; A Proposal for a New History of Humankind, Part 1.
(Links to the Kindle Edition on Amazon)
What is a human being? What causes the self-destructiveness of the human species? These questions are before humanity more burning than ever.
The empirical disciplines that study the difference between man and animal and prehistory have achieved revolutionary results since the 1950s. Also, in recent years and decades, several significant works have been published, in which the latest knowledge on prehistory is combined with an overall view of the history of humankind.
Do these studies and works unravel the mystery of human? If not – why?
To unravel the mystery of man, we need a philosophy-led interdisciplinarity, in a word, a philosophy of history. So far, such a philosophy has been largely absent from the debate on the subject.
In this book series, the latest empirical research and the breakthroughs of the entire human journey up to the present day and the future are gone though and presented in the light of the philosophy of history of the Finnish philosopher Matti Puolakka (1947-2018).
The first part covers the origin and evolution of the Homo genus up to the birth of society and modern human about 60 000 years ago. Koskela takes an extensive look at the empirical results of prehistoric research from the 1950s to the very recent years. He also comments on well-known scholars and authors, including Frans de Waal, Richard Leakey, Glynn Isaac, Jared Diamond, Francis Fukuyama, Yuval Noah Harari and, most recently, David Graeber and David Wengrow.
The book also includes an essay on the difference between man and animal and an introduction to the life and work of Matti Puolakka. The theoretical foundations of Puolakka’s philosophy of history are presented in an article by Heli Santavuori.
In 2022, September 9th will take place a launch event of Finnish edition of the book “The Dawn of Everything – A New History of Humanity” by David Graeber and David Wengrow. The book has attracted great attention around the world. We have a lot of respect for these authors but we also have criticisms of their book. Criticisms are briefly presented in the recent book of Pertti Koskela. As a matter of fact, Koskela’s book is, as such, a critique of the book by Graeber and Wengrow, because they claim that “for the most part, we don’t have the slightest idea” about the 2,5-million-year-prehistory of the human genus. The Dawn of Everything starts from the prehistoric period where the Part 1 of our book series ends. New History Association intends to participate actively in the debate on the book in Finland by publishing a book review and several articles on the book.
Read more about the topics of the book and book series: