Author Description

Good anthropology should frighten and disturb. How many children are ritually sacrificed in Uganda each year? Why does China have such a long history of cannibalism? Do modern soldiers still go berserk like the Vikings of old? In this essay collection, Stone Age Herbalist ranges across a number of uncomfortable topics, from Mongolian eco-fascists to contemporary child witchcraft murders in Britain, the philosophy of Aztec violence and the biological impacts of famines on populations. The vision of the world he presents breaks sharply with the comfortable scholarly consensus on human nature and summons up forgotten truths now buried by modernity. Human life is far more dark and vital, more marked with hostility, expansion and heroism than we are led to believe. Inside you will discover the prehistory of whaling, seafaring, the horror of deep time, indigenous warfare, the genius of shamanism, English melancholy, the mysteries of palaeolithic Australia and much more. With public scepticism of academic experts at an all time high and the revelations of genetics threatening to bring back war and conquest to a timid archaeological ivory tower, the time is right for a fresh and rigorous examination of the world.