num_pages: 448
description: From language to culture to cultural collision: the story of how humans invented history from the Stone Age to the Virtual AgeTraveling across millennia weaving the experiences and world views of cultures both extinct and extant The Invention of Yesterday shows that the engine of history is not so much heroic (battles won) geographic (farmers thrive) or anthropogenic (humans change the planet) as it is narrative.Many thousands of years ago when we existed only as countless small autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers widely distributed through the wilderness we began inventing stories--to organize for survival to find purpose and meaning to explain the unfathomable. Ultimately these became the basis for empires civilizations and cultures. And when various narratives began to collide and overlap the encounters produced everything from confusion chaos and war to cultural efflorescence religious awakenings and intellectual breakthroughs.Through vivid stories studded with insights Tamim Ansary illuminates the world-historical consequences of the unique human capacity to invent and communicate abstract ideas. In doing so he also explains our ever-more-intertwined present: the narratives now shaping us the reasons we still battle one another and the future we may yet create.
language: English
title: The Invention of Yesterday: A 50,000-Year History of Human Culture, Conflict, and Connection
publisher: PublicAffairs