The basic idea informing the plot of Eugene Linden’s paleontological thriller Deep Past (2019) is neatly summarized in this snatch of dialogue: “Ten thousand years ago humans were just as intelligent as we are today, but our material culture was almost non-existent. Evolution produced human intelligence in the blink of an eye; our material culture… Continue Reading Intelligence is always animal intelligence: on Eugene Linden’s Deep Past (2019)
Tag: prehistory
On the concept of pre-extinction
Typically, we think of extinction in terms of the death of the last individual member of the species facing extinction. A species goes extinct when there aren’t any more organisms belonging to it still walking around. What comes to mind is a short fragment by Jorge Luis Borges, “The Witness” (1967). In the fragment, Borges… Continue Reading On the concept of pre-extinction