The Invention of Yesterday: A 50,000-Year History of Human Culture, Conflict, and Connection

In this extraordinary book, an award-winning author tells the story of how humans invented history, from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age

"Terrific... Tamim Ansary explores the underappreciated ways that empires, nations, and smaller sets of people have responded to their surroundings, influenced one another, and developed stories that give their lives meaning." ―San Francisco Chronicle

Traveling across millennia and cultures, The Invention of Yesterday argues that world history is a narrative we're constantly inventing. Fifty thousand years ago, we roamed the world as countless autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers, each one telling itself a story of the world with itself at the center. We used narratives to organize for survival and explain the unfathomable, and these stories evolved into the bases for cultures, empires, and civilizations. When disparate narratives collided, the encounters produced everything from confusion, chaos, and war to cultural efflorescence, religious awakenings, and intellectual breakthroughs.

In this updated edition with a new postscript, Tamim Ansary uses insightful, vivid stories to illuminate how our propensity to invent a shared symbolic universe has shaped our journey from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age.

Author: Tamim Ansary
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 02/24/2026
Pages: 464
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 8.10h x 5.40w x 1.40d
ISBN13: 9781541706224
ISBN10: 1541706226
BISAC Categories:
- History | World | General
- History | Civilization
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social

About the Author
Tamim Ansary is the author of many books, including Destiny Disrupted. He has published essays and commentary in the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, the Los Angeles Times, and more. Born in Afghanistan in 1948, he moved to the US in 1964. He lives in San Francisco.