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A Walk Through Deep History: Narrative,

Embodied Strategies, and Human Evolution

MARCO CARACCIOLO*

Ghent University

Abstract

Drawing on work in cognitive neuroscience and psycholinguistics, narrative
theorists have argued that making sense of stories builds on schemata drawn
from our embodied experience of the world. Put simply, as audiences immerse
themselves into fictional worlds, they bring their bodies along—and this
makes an important difference for interpretation. This essay explores this dif-
ference in relation to two prose narratives that seek to connect readers with
the ‘deep history’ of human evolution: “Out of Eden” (2013-), a writing proj-
ect by American journalist Paul Salopek; and The Inheritors (1955), a novel
by British author William Golding. Both narratives strategically exploit read-
ers’ embodied resonance as they imagine (respectively) the migration of our
ancestors and the life of a group of Neanderthals. In this way, Salopek and
Golding use embodied experience as a probe into the ideologically loaded ques-
tion of human difference—and of our position vis-à-vis the nonhuman
world.

Keywords: narrative; human evolution; Neanderthals; embodied sim-
ulation; biocultural turn.

* Department of Literary Studies, English Literature, Ghent University, Bel-
gium (marco.caracciolo@ugent.be). Research for this article was supported
by the European Research Council, grant number 714166 (NARMESH).