Home ⋅ Published Books ⋅ Humanity Before Civilization: From the Earliest Hominins to the First Cities

Humanity Before Civilization: From the Earliest Hominins to the First Cities
Share by Email Share on Messenger Share on Whatsapp Share on Whatsapp

By: Eamann de Thuit
Publisher: Humanity Series Publishing
Published: August 2026
Pages: 362
Categories: Earth Sciences, Non-Fiction, Science
Language: English
Available as: Hardback, Paperback, Audio
On sale at:
ISBN-13: 9781808800016

We are not the end of a staircase. We are the survivors of a narrowing path. Seven million years ago, something stood upright at the edge of a shrinking African lake. It was not human. It was not an ape. It was the first step in an experiment that would eventually produce at least eight different human species — and let only one of them survive. Humanity Before Civilization is the story of everyone who came before the first city: the upright apes, the fire-keepers, the cave-dwellers, the ice-walkers, the lost cousins whose bones we are only now learning to read. It is a sweeping, evidence-driven journey through seven million years of human evolution — from Toumaï and Ardi to Neanderthals and Denisovans, from the mammoth steppe to Göbekli Tepe, from the last Ice Age to the first grain fields of Mesopotamia. This is not a textbook march of progress. It is a family history — violent, scattered, brilliant, and fragile — told through the fossils, genomes, footprints, and flooded landscapes that survive us. You will meet: — Toumaï and Ardi, the improbable first walkers, and the collapse of the "savannah hypothesis" that once explained why we stand upright — Homo erectus, the most successful human species that ever lived, who endured for nearly two million years and crossed continents on foot — Homo naledi, small-brained cave explorers who may have deliberately placed their dead in total darkness deep underground — The Denisovans, an entire branch of humanity discovered only in 2010 — from a single fingertip bone — who still shape the immune systems and high-altitude survival of people alive today — The Neanderthals, who built mysterious ring structures three hundred meters underground, cared for their wounded into old age, and live on in the DNA of every non-African person on Earth — The Ice Age hunters who survived the coldest millennia in human memory, and the controversial evidence for a catastrophic comet impact at the end of the last Ice Age — Göbekli Tepe, the astonishing 11,000-year-old sanctuary that suggests religion may have come before farming, not after it — The first villages of Mesopotamia, where humanity began trading freedom for grain, and the long, difficult transition into the world we now call civilization Drawing on paleoanthropology, ancient DNA research, climate science, and archaeology — and engaging honestly with both mainstream consensus and the more contested debates around catastrophism and the Younger Dryas — this book restores the strangeness, danger, and wonder of the world before history began. It does not offer a tidy story of inevitable human triumph. It offers something more honest: a species that survived by a thread, absorbed the biology of the cousins it replaced, and is still, in every measurable way, carrying the dead within the living. If you've ever wondered what came before the pyramids, before writing, before cities — before us, in the sense we usually mean — this is where that story begins. For readers of Sapiens, The Dawn of Everything, and Graham Hancock's explorations of the deep past, Humanity Before Civilization is a rigorously researched, richly narrated account of the seven-million-year journey that made civilization possible — and nearly didn't happen at all.

Other Books From this Category

View More From This Category

About Us

Irish Interest in based on one very simple idea: to bring the contents of any Irish bookshop to people everywhere, especially those outside Ireland who do not have the possibility of keeping abreast of new books published in Ireland. The Irish Interest web platform is purely a provider of information about new publications. The aim of the site is to have every publishing house in Ireland adding their latest titles as they become available. Hyperlinks to each title bring users of the site directly to the publisher's web area or to a sales site where books can be purchased.

Privacy Policy

Irishinterest.ie and its owners strive at all times to preserver the privacy of all personal information stored on its website and servers. Information deemed to be private and confidential will not be communicated to any parties or divulged in any way. Cookies and similar technologies Irishinterest.ie and its owners are not responsible for external data collection entities. Third party sites with access to Irishinterest.ie may be able to acquire or assimilate data. Cookies and similar technologies can be utilized by third parties accessing our site without our knowledge.

Terms & Conditions

Irishinterest.ie, Irishinterest.com, and its owners take no responsibility for information issued on its site that is posted by third parties. It is the sole responsibility of the third parties who utilize the site for publication of any information to ensure that such information is correct and does not infringe laws and the rights of others who may be affected by publication of such information. Disputed material will be removed pending clarification.