Robert L. Kelly – författare

In this book, Robert L. Kelly challenges the preconceptions that hunter-gatherers were Paleolithic relics living in a raw state of nature, instead crafting a position that emphasizes their diversity, and downplays attempts to model the original foraging lifeway or to use foragers to depict human nature stripped to its core. Kelly reviews the anthropological literature for variation among living foragers in terms of diet, mobility, sharing, land tenure, technology, exchange, male-female relations, division of labor, marriage, descent and political organization. Using the paradigm of human behavioral ecology, he analyzes the diversity in these areas and seeks to explain rather than explain away variability, and argues for an approach to prehistory that uses archaeological data to test theory rather than one that uses ethnographic analogy to reconstruct the past.

"I have seen yesterday. I know tomorrow." This inscription in Tutankhamun's tomb summarizes The Fifth Beginning. Here, archeologist Robert Kelly explains how the study of our cultural past can predict the future of humanity. In an eminently readable style, Kelly identifies four key pivot points in the six-million-year history of human development: the emergence of technology, culture, agriculture, and the state. In each example, the author examines the long-term processes that resulted in a definitive no-turning-back change for the organization of society. Kelly then looks ahead, giving us evidence for what he calls a fifth beginning, one that began about AD 1500. Some might call it "globalization," but the author places it in its larger context: a 5,000-year arms race, capitalism's global reach, and the cultural effects of a worldwide communication network. Kelly predicts the emergent phenomena of this fifth beginning will include the end of war as a viable way to resolve disputes, the end of capitalism as we know it, the widespread appearance of world citizenship, and forms of cooperation that end nation-states' near-sacred status. It's the end of life, as we have known it.However, this book and the author are cautiously optimistic: it dwells not on the coming chaos, but on humanity's great potential.

“I have seen yesterday. I know tomorrow.” This inscription in Tutankhamun’s tomb summarizes The Fifth Beginning. Here, archaeologist Robert L. Kelly explains how the study of our cultural past can predict the future of humanity.  In an eminently readable style, Kelly identifies four key pivot points in the six-million-year history of human development: the emergence of technology, culture, agriculture, and the state. In each example, the author examines the long-term processes that resulted in a definitive, no-turning-back change for the organization of society. Kelly then looks ahead, giving us evidence for what he calls a fifth beginning, one that started about AD 1500. Some might call it “globalization,” but the author places it in its larger context: a five-thousand-year arms race, capitalism’s global reach, and the cultural effects of a worldwide communication network.  Kelly predicts that the emergent phenomena of this fifth beginning will include the end of war as a viable way to resolve disputes, the end of capitalism as we know it, the widespread shift toward world citizenship, and the rise of forms of cooperation that will end the near-sacred status of nation-states. It’s the end of life as we have known it. However, the author is cautiously optimistic: he dwells not on the coming chaos, but on humanity’s great potential.

The author wrote this book (which was originally published by Smithsonian Institution Press in 1995) to show his archaeology students how dangerous anthropological analogy is and how variable the actual practices of foragers of the recent past and today are. His survey of the anthropological literature points to differences in foraging societies’ patterns of diet, mobility, sharing, land tenure, exchange, gender relations, division of labor, marriage, descent, and political organization. By considering the actual—not imagined—reasons behind diverse behaviour, this book argues for a revision of many archaeological models of prehistory.