Myth of Human Nature: A New History of Us

A radical new story of human nature, family, and the myths we mistake for biology.

What if almost everything we think we know about the “natural” family is wrong? In The Myth of Human Nature, evolutionary anthropologist Heidi Colleran upends the old stories that have governed our ideas about sex, reproduction, kinship, motherhood, age, inheritance, and human nature itself, showing that the truth is stranger, more diverse, and more liberating than we have been told.

Drawing on everything from South Pacific origin myths and ancient DNA to breastfeeding practices, matriarchal prehistory, and the manosphere, Colleran shows how Western science has repeatedly mistaken its own cultural assumptions for universal biological truths. But the nuclear family is not a default, and blood is not the essence of kinship. Biology does not dictate patriarchy, capitalism, or the way we raise children. In fact, human evolution has always been shaped by culture and the social technologies we invent to make more people like us.

For readers of Cat Bohannon, Lucy Cooke, and David Graeber, The Myth of Human Nature is a dazzling, provocative account of what makes us human, and an invitation to see family not as a biological destiny, but as one of our species’ most powerful acts of imagination.