Deep History and Compulsive Hoarding

Professor Daniel Lord Smail is looking into the past to understand our present day obsession with things

“It seems silly to write history as if it started 200 or even 600 years ago.”

Visiting Professor Daniel Lord Smail takes a longer term view of human history, that really we should be telling a story that stretches back through time to the millions of years.

The Harvard University Professor will be presenting a public lecture tonight that indicates that our innately human compulsions might drive history, rather than the grand actions of great men and women.

He argues that larger scale history is made up of millions upon millions of tiny moments, each driven by human compulsion, and this includes our impulse to possess.

“History is driven by the interactions between humans and their social group, and humans and the material environment,” said Professor Smail.

“We humans began by creating physical culture, but after we began creating tools, we began to be influenced by them in return. It’s a co-evolutionary process.”

Professor Smail says that the tools that humans created have actually affected the way we have developed, especially the way our brains have progressed.