Coming Home to the Pleistocene (Island Press)

Paul Shepard was one of the most profound and original thinkers of our time. Seminal works like The Tender Carnivore and the Sacred Game, Thinking Animals, and Nature and Madness introduced readers to new and provocative ideas about humanity and its relationship to the natural world. Throughout his long and distinguished career, Shepard returned repeatedly to his guiding theme: that our essential human nature is a product of our genetic heritage, formed through thousands of years of evolution during the Pleistocene epoch, and that the current subversion of that Pleistocene heritage lies at the heart of today's ecological and social ills. Coming Home to the Pleistocene, published posthumously in 1998 and now available for the first time in paperback, provides the fullest summation of that theme and the clearest expression of his ideas. In bold, poetic language, Shepard asks us to counter the blind destruction of the earth's creatures and natural systems żeby drawing on primal wisdom embedded in our genomes and fine-tuned żeby hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.To do so, he assures us, is not regressive; we cannot avoid the inherent and essential demands of an ancient, repetitive pattern. In addition, the book explicitly addresses the fundamental question raised by Shepard's work - What can we do to recreate a life more in tune with our genetic roots? - and presents concrete suggestions for fostering the kinds of ecological settings and cultural practices that are optimal for human health and well-being.