Prehistory and primal civilizations
Many books describe the world before humans, as it is discovered by modern humans in their geographic or time travels. For instance, the great Conan Doyle (the author of Sherlock Holmes) produced a book about a group of modern people finding a Jurassic territory somewhere on earth. The plot is good, but the ambient racism is depressing. These adventurers behave like the real Stanley. Let go of the book, try Jurassic Park instead; the book by Michael Crichton was published in 1990. I thought the movie was better than the book: there is something unpolished and insincere about Crichton's books that turns me off (but it made of him a millionaire.)
Of course the real prehistory books show prehistoric humans and do not rely on time travel.
I was entranced, as a kid, by the Belgian/French author Rosny (b. 1856), because he started one of his books on prehistoric times with a sentence that said roughly this: "this happened so long ago that the Polar star was not over the North Pole". It is a very romantic idea: not only living conditions were very different for prehistoric men, but even the sky appeared different. I was hooked. I did believe, before that, that people always found the North Pole by looking at Polaris. It is in fact true for a few generations: for your grandparents and their ancestors and for some generations after your grandkids. But it is not always true. The earth is behaving like a spinning top: it wobbles around its axis. Consequently, for a Terrian, the stars do not seem to be at the same place when the earth axis tilts the other way. The cycle lasts about 26 000 years. This means that the sky will be the same as today 26 000 years from now. The truth is that prehistoric men were there for a few million years, so quite a few of them had the same sky as we do. No matter, Rosny's books keep their romantic appeal for me about sixty years after I read them. The best is still the Quest for fire*** It is not, specialists complain, the "real" prehistory as they see it. I just keep waiting for their novels.
Some populations continue nowadays to live in very very ancient conditions. So you might like to read some ethnologists. One of my preferred one, as an author, is the French ethnologist Robert Jaulin (1928-1996). The man was very nice, creative and driven, and fascinating but his scientific method was a bit too intuitive for me; it still made of him a great read. My preferred book from Jaulin is called La mort Sara, but I could not find it in English. If you read Spanish, you might like to read his anthology El Etnocidio A Traves de las Americas.
Sun Hopi*** is a very successful autobiography on the loss of traditions confronted to western way of life. If the words Wounded Knee ring a bell for you, try Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt: it is a classic.
It is a mistake to think that all these "primitive" populations did roughly the same thing. Many countries nowadays have cars, it does not make their populations similar. For instance, primal art has characteristics that can cover large territories and sometimes long periods of time, at least for the non specialist. But do not be mistaken: the artistic formalism is always unique to a group of people. Take a book on primitive art in Europe and slid in it a copy of an art piece from America or Australia, a ten years old will tell you immediately that it does not belong there. See for instance The Native Arts of North America, Africa and the South Pacific by George A. Corbin.
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