The Iceman Inheritance: Prehistoric Sources of Western Man's Racism, Sexism and Aggression Paperback – June 1, 1991

Pro:It is likely that the MAGA crowd and Conservatives in general will strongly disapprove of the provocative thesis of the Iceman's Inheritance: Overall, White people are more aggressive than Blacks and Asians due to a combination of extreme sexual dimorphism, evolving within a glacial environment coupled with an intense fear of being rendered irrelevant by their offspring leading to a distrust of others. And what's worse is that they are imposing their values upon everyone else in the world.This is a bold claim to be sure and the conditions don't even appear to be connected, but you can see for yourself: google "African values", "Japanese values" and "American values". A couple of African values are 'carrying out obligations of the communal aspects of life' and 'providing hospitality'; a couple of Japanese values are "harmony (with people, nature, the Universe)' and 'thinking of others'. Some American values include '"freedom"', 'self-reliance' and 'material wealth'. This idea of self-reliance succinctly explains healthcare in the US.I just finished the book a few days ago, so I'm still in a state of shock (realization actually) and I've since had to re-evaluate everything I once knew as fact in light of this new mind-state. I now understand the root cause of racism, had never even considered why there is so much violence against women (I better understand the context of overturning Roe v. Wade) and why African descendants are so lost and self-loathing. And as an OREO who is not very good at "code-switching" I now need to re-examine my identity and values, though there is much less confusion now than when I was in high school.What I was *not* expecting was an insightful discussion upon the Western idea of "love", and how absurd of a concept it is since it is so difficult to define. In Spanish for instance, it is not even possible to say "I love that purse" - you could only say "I like that purse very much". In other words, it is not possible to "love" an object. The distinction is very mild in English, less so in other languages. This may be why "Keeping Up with the Joneses" feels so empty.Con:Chapter Five which discusses the biological adaptations of the Neanderthal compared to Homo Sapiens is as exciting as watching paint dry, an exceptionally painful read. Some of the editing is a little messy with sentence fragments peppered here and there, a minor annoyance. One of the other reviewers lamented the author's frequent tangents of discussion, but I found them refreshing and insightful. The range and depth of his ideas are broad and encompass concepts I wasn't expecting to see in a book about racism and sexism, such as ship construction.This book was written before the peak of the Cold War, so his climate change predictions are the opposite of what we're currently experiencing. And since the book was written in the mid-1970s I had to adjust my frame of thinking to be contemporaneous to that time, but also aware of what's happened since (specifically the rise of the Tea Party in the 2010 elections).In summary, in a time of culture wars against "wokeness" (a.k.a acknowledging the past objectively), I don't see White people embracing these challenging ideas even as their numbers decrease due to declining birth rate. I thoroughly believe this is one of three books every male Black teen should read in high school (the other two being "Africa: the Biography of a Continent" and "Stolen Legacy"). Females too obviously, but we all know males unfortunately are hunted for sport.

Must read . The American educational institution are making us dumber not smarter by hiding history. Once you study their origins then you will understand why Racism is their RELIGION..

Glad I purchased this book for my collection. Great information. Knowledge is power.

Notwithstanding his admission of the general scientific bankruptcy of the concept of race as it is usually used, the author of this book accepts that humans can be more or less accurately anthropologically grouped in a way that corresponds to race, based on prehistoric ancestry, and posits that one such "race," Caucasoids, are unique in their aggressiveness due to their Neanderthal ancestry. Bradley's thesis is that Neanderthal "psychobiological" adaptations to a glacial environment underpin what he argues are unique levels of misogyny, racism, warmongering, and perennially escalating, environmentally dangerous, technological "progress."I was biased towards this book because of the outrageousness of it's thesis, but I was also somewhat disappointed in both the quality and quantity of anthropological evidence. For example, the author's argument for the evolution of Caucasoid misogyny rests in part on the millennia of mutual mistrust between the sexes arising from extreme Neanderthal sexual dimorphism; males and females could barely recognize one another as belonging to the same species. Part of this dimorphism is established by reasoning from the large size of Neanderthal infant crania to the extremely rotund Neanderthal female body that supposedly would have been necessary to survive birthing such creatures; however, the author admits that only two such skulls, one badly damaged, had been found at the time of writing. To his credit, the author admits that his entire argument is lacking in conclusiveness early in the book.Bradley also traces Caucasoid behavioral inheritance with insightful psychological analysis, but this is necessarily of an even more dubious variety than psychology normally suffers, being that the mind under study is that of a long-extinct species. He invokes a concept called The Chronos Complex to show that a natural pre-historic psychosocial development (recognizance of the past-present-future continuity of life) mixed with maladaptive Neanderthal territoriality projected into the temporal dimension has resulted in Caucasoid societies that are recklessly determined to out-do their ancestors and poised to obliterate the future with their dangerous technologies.The author also puts forth a fascinating comparison of Western and non-Western cultural elements to illustrate Caucasoid obsession with sex and taming nature with technology. I loved the discussion of sexual mores in Ancient Egypt and China, but I would have preferred a more cursory examination of a larger number of cultural elements, rather than the detailed look at only a few.Overall, the book was refreshingly unique and terribly thought-provoking, but the discussion of current events and subsequent warnings to check the destructive actions of Western civilization were more practical and compelling than the evidence used to explicate their genesis. The discussion of the various argument points was somewhat disorganized and uneven (some points seemed long-winded), and I couldn't see that the author ever explicitly explained why Neanderthal's were so aggressive in the first place. Also, the content in the chapter entitled "The Concept of Race" was too tangential to warrant the chapter length.

I've read this book about 20 years ago and it still applies to the white supremacy of today. People who moan, whine, and complain about this book and the author need to study the research of their racial insecurities.This author is white and even his 5 year old son at the time of Bradley's book Dawn Voyage about 20 years ago proves time and time again that his son can think logically.

The author was not ashamed to tell the truth!

Information is in the book

Taught me a lot about why certain things are as they are. History is best qualified to reward all research, and this book does good. Culture is what it's all about, and I get it now. For those seeking indepth understanding on eurocentric culture, this book is a must read in my opinion.