Before the dawn

What Hacker News says

1. annowikiOct 2022
   I can strongly recommend Fussel's (the author of this essay) book "The Boys' Crusade", which provides a very eye opening account to WWII. It is most likely a longer version of this essay (I haven't read this essay).

   I can also recommend his book Poetic Meter & Poetic Form, but for different reasons.

   Other books in the same vein:

   - The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle by J Glenn Gray (Gray was a philosophy PhD and a 2nd Lieutenant in the war)

   - War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges (Hedges was a war correspondent during the balkans and numerous other conflicts, this is much more interested in the psychological build up to war in common society, and its effects on society)

   These books make me very pessimistic about human nature, but Nicholas Wade's Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors provides a nice antidote: the total number of people killed by warfare in the 20th Century, if we followed similar patterns to our prehistoric ancestors, would have dwarfed what actually happened. We are becoming less warlike, even if its not cured.

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2. steamodonDec 2020
   It's been a while since I read it, but I remember enjoying Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade.
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3. sradmanJul 2020
   AFAIK, the best (first?) popular science book that tackles this question is Before the Dawn [1] by Nicholas Wade.

   [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_the_Dawn_(book)

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4. b_emeryJun 2017
   It's another data point, and must be assessed relative to other data points. Some details of the origin of our species are better known than others, and thus some are more or less likely to be 'reset'. The evidence for African origins, for example, are overwhelming and will not likely be 'reset'. The precise dating of the origin of homo sapiens - if that is even possible - is still in flux. This is the scientific process - science as error correction mechanism.

   Before the Dawn by Nicholas Wade is a great book reviewing the recent science on our species from about 100k year ago to about 10k years ago. It provides the overview and context that you dont get from a NYT article such as this.

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5. jaylittDec 2015
   "Debt: The First 5000 Years" David Graeber

   "Kokoro" Natsume Soseki

   "The Politics of Dialogical Imagination" Hirano Katsuya

   "History and Repetition" Karatani Kojin

   "The Structure of World History" Karatani Kojin

   "Anti-Oedipus" Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari

   "Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors" Nicholas Wade

   "Capital, Volume I" Karl Marx

   These books have been the most informative and thought-provoking for me this year.

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6. awtSep 2007
   I'm a sociology nerd. If you want to understand how important sociology is, and how clearly it can be reasoned about, read Eric Hoffer. If you want to understand how important it is to understand how we evolved, read "Before the Dawn."

   Also, I like to look at sociology as the study of complex systems - extremely complex systems. It is difficult to study systems over which you do not have complete experimental control, however it is possible to view history as a series of experiments.

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