The Great Man Theory of History and the Paleolithic Curse of Humankind

Abstract

This study is motivated by the plea of a renowned philosopher who urged humankind to break the habit of reverencing and submitting to seemingly great human beings, whose great mistakes issue in tragic historical events that threaten the survival of civilization. Conceiving World War Two as a modern tragedy, and using instructive elements of this era to identify an enraptured nation’s worship of a seemingly great leader, the author sources evolutionary biology to evidence the thesis that hereditary human nature, now conceived as a maladaptive Paleolithic Curse, is the origin of humankind’s emotional instability, ruinous aggression, enduring worship of fallible alphas, divisive tribalism, and mastery of artful deceptions. While challenging the facile claim of epigenetic science that education will produce a worldwide enlightenment enabling humankind to defeat the Paleolithic Curse, the forced choice of retrofitting the human genotype by advocates of volitional selection underlies this analysis of humankind’s lesser greatness.