Reimagining Progress of Prehistoric Humans: Technological Adaptation and Ethical Complexity in Golding’s The Inheritors

Yanyu Zhou; Yueling Ma

doi:10.25159/1753-5387/18802

Authors

Yanyu Zhou Wuhan University https://orcid.org/0009-0002-5759-1887
Yueling Ma South China University of Technology https://orcid.org/0009-0006-2967-2929

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25159/1753-5387/18802

Keywords:

William Golding, The Inheritors, progress, Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, technological adaptation, ethical complexity

Abstract

This study reexamines William Golding’s The Inheritors (1955) as a critical meditation on the interplay between technological innovation and ethical responsibility within a prehistoric setting. Integrating literary analysis with archaeological findings and philosophical theory, the research challenges linear narratives that equate technological superiority with civilisational advancement. Golding frames the encounter between Neanderthals and Homo sapiens as an ethical confrontation between two modes of consciousness: the embodied, empathetic worldview of Neanderthals and the instrumental rationality of Homo sapiens. Through techniques of defamiliarisation and shifting cognitive perspective, the novel distinguishes between sensory-integrated understanding and the analytical, object-oriented cognition of modern humans. The adoption of a Neanderthal infant by a Homo sapiens mother emerges as the novel’s ethical fulcrum, symbolising the potential synthesis of technological capacity with moral awareness. Recent paleogenetic discoveries confirming Neanderthal DNA in modern humans lend scientific significance to Golding’s vision of cross-species integration. By deconstructing conventional progress narratives, this study illuminates Golding’s vision of ethical evolution—one that regards technological adaptation and empathetic understanding as complementary components of human advancement, offering timely insights into contemporary ethical dilemmas posed by accelerating technological change.

References

Alterman, Peter S. 1978. “Aliens in Golding’s The Inheritors.” Science Fiction Studies 5 (1): 3–10. https://doi.org/10.1525/sfs.5.1.0003.

Backwell, Lucinda, Justin Bradfield, Kristian J. Carlson, Tea Jashashvili, Lyn Wadley, and Francesco d’Errico. 2018. “The Antiquity of Bow-and-Arrow Technology: Evidence from Middle Stone Age Layers at Sibudu Cave.” Antiquity 92 (362): 289–303. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2018.11.

Bahn, Paul G. 2015. “Bow and Errors.” In Ritual Landscapes and Borders within Rock Art Research: Papers in Honour of Professor Kalle Sognnes, edited by Heidrun Stebergløkken, Ragnhild Berge, Eva Lindgaard, and Helle Vangen Stuedal, 59–65. Oxford: Archaeopress. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.15135891.10.

Bergonzi, Bernard. 1970. The Situation of the Novel. London: Macmillan.

Bhattacharjee, Juthika. 2011. Exploring Fictional World of William Golding. Delhi: Akansha Publishing House.

Biles, Jack I. 1970. Talk: Conversations with William Golding. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Biles, Jack I., and Robert O. Evans, eds. 1978. William Golding: Some Critical Considerations. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

Black, Elizabeth. 1993. “Metaphor, Simile and Cognition in Golding’s The Inheritors.” Language and Literature 2 (1): 37–48. https://doi.org/10.1177/096394709300200103.

Boyd, Stephen J. 1990. The Novels of William Golding. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Bury, John Bagnell. 1920. The Idea of Progress: An Inquiry into Its Origin and Growth. London: Macmillan.

Caracciolo, Marco. 2016. “Literary Proto-Humans: Cognition and Evolution in London’s Before Adam and Golding’s The Inheritors.” Orbis Litterarum 71 (3): 215–239. https://doi.org/10.1111/oli.12089.

Carey, John. 2009. William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies. New York: Free Press.

Crawford, Paul. 2002. Politics and History in William Golding: The World Turned Upside Down. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.

Darwin, Charles. 2009. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511703829.

Deacon, H. J. 1995. “Two Late Pleistocene-Holocene Archaeological Depositories from the Southern Cape, South Africa.” The South African Archaeological Bulletin 50 (162): 121–131. https://in-africa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Deacon-1995-SAfrArchB-2-late-Ple-Hol-sites-southern-Cape.pdf.

DePaolo, Charles. 2000. “Wells, Golding, and Auel: Representing the Neanderthal.” Science Fiction Studies 27 (3): 418–438. https://doi.org/10.1525/sfs.27.3.0418.

Descartes, René. 2006. A Discourse on the Method. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Diamond, Jared. 1999. “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race.” Discover Magazine, May 1. https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race.

Finlayson, Clive. 2004. Neanderthals and Modern Humans: An Ecological and Evolutionary Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511542374.

Finlayson, Clive, and José S. Carrion. 2007. “Rapid Ecological Turnover and Its Impact on Neanderthal and Other Human Populations.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 22 (4): 213–222. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2007.02.001.

Golding, William. 1955. The Inheritors. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.

Golding, William. 1965. The Hot Gates and Other Occasional Pieces. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.

Golding, William. 1982. A Moving Target. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Golding, William, and James R. Baker. 1982. “An Interview with William Golding.” Twentieth Century Literature 28 (2): 130–170. https://doi.org/10.2307/441151.

Graeber, David, and David Wengrow. 2021. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Gray, John. 2004. “An Illusion with a Future.” Daedalus 133 (3): 10–17. https://doi.org/10.1162/0011526041504542.

Green, Richard E., Johannes Krause, Adrian W. Briggs, et al. 2010. “A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome.” Science 328 (5979): 710–722. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1188021.

Haffenden, John. 1985. Novelists in Interview. London: Methuen.

Halliday, M. A. K. 1981. “Linguistic Function and Literary Style: An Inquiry into the Language of William Golding’s The Inheritors.” In Essays in Modern Stylistics, edited by Donald C. Freeman, 325–360. London: Methuen.

Harari, Yuval Noah. 2011. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. New York: Vintage Books.

Hoover, David L. 1999. Language and Style in The Inheritors. Lanham: University Press of America.

Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. 2002. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Edited by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, translated by Edmund Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Jablonski, Nina G., and George Chaplin. 1992. “The Origin of Hominid Bipedalism Re-Examined.” Archaeology in Oceania 27 (3): 113–119. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1834-4453.1992.tb00294.x.

James, Edward. 2004. “Review: of Apes and Various Types of Human.” Review of Human Prehistory in Fiction by Charles De Paolo. Science Fiction Studies 31 (1): 141–143. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4241237.

Kant, Immanuel. 1991. Political Writings. Edited by Hans Reiss, translated by Hugh Barr Nisbet. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511809620.

Lombard, Marlize, and Lyn Wadley. 2016. “Hunting Technologies during the Howiesons Poort at Sibudu Cave: What They Reveal about Human Cognition in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, between ~65 and 62 ka.” In Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Stone Age Weaponry, edited by Radu Iovita and Kaoru Sano, 273–286. New York: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7602-8_19.

Malafouris, Lambros. 2013. How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement. Foreword by Colin Renfrew. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9476.001.0001.

Mandala, Susan. 2018. “‘Listening’ to the Neanderthals in William Golding’s The Inheritors: A Sociopragmatic Approach to Fictional Dialogue.” Discourse, Context and Media 23: 62–69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2017.05.006.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 1972. Selected Works of Marx and Engels. Vol. 4. Beijing: People’s Publishing House.

Mellars, Paul. 2004. “Neanderthals and the Modern Human Colonization of Europe.” Nature 432: 461–465. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03103.

Nisbet, Robert A. 1980. History of the Idea of Progress. New York: Basic Books.

Oppenheimer, J. Robert. 2013. Uncommon Sense. Illustrated ed. New York: Springer Science and Business Media.

Pääbo, Svante. 2014. Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes. New York: Basic Books.

Price, T. Douglas. 2013. Europe before Rome: A Site-by-Site Tour of the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199914708.001.0001.

Rich, Frederic C. 2016. “The Neander Valley: The Place We Learned We Were Not Alone.” SiteLINES: A Journal of Plae 11 (2): 5–7. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24889512.

Rifkin, Jeremy, and Ted Howard. 1980. Entropy: A New World View. New York: The Viking Press.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 2008. Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Translated by Li Pingwo. Beijing: Commercial Press.

Sankararaman, Sriram, Nick Patterson, Heng Li, Svante Pääbo, and David Reich. 2012. “The Date of Interbreeding between Neandertals and Modern Humans.” PLOS Genetics 8 (10): e1002947. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1002947.

Sarton, George. 1948. The Life of Science: Essays in the History of Civilization. Foreword by Max Fisch. New York: Henry Schuman. https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.4662.

Scarry, Elaine. 1985. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Slimak, Ludovic, Clément Zanolli, Tom Higham, et al. 2022. “Modern Human Incursion into Neanderthal Territories 54,000 Years Ago at Mandrin, France.” Science Advances 8 (6): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abj9496.

Solecki, Ralph S. 1971. Shanidar: The First Flower People. New York: Knopf.

Spikins, Penny. 2015. How Compassion Made Us Human: The Evolutionary Origins of Tenderness, Trust and Morality. Barnsley: Pen and Sword.

Stout, Dietrich, Nicholas Toth, Kathy Schick, and Thierry Chaminade. 2008. “Neural Correlates of Early Stone Age Toolmaking: Technology, Language and Cognition in Human Evolution.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 363 (1499): 1939–1949. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2008.0001.

Stringer, Chris. 2011. The Origin of Our Species. New York: Allen Lane.

Trinkaus, Erik, and William W. Howells.1979. “The Neanderthals.” Scientific American 241 (6): 118–133. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1279-118.

Vallor, Shannon. 2016. Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190498511.001.0001.

Walker, Jeanne Murray. 1981. “Reciprocity and Exchange in William Golding’s The Inheritors.” Science Fiction Studies 8 (3): 297–310 https://doi.org/10.1525/sfs.8.3.0297.

Wells, H.G. The Outline of History. 1921. New York: The Macmillan Company.

Yuan, Deyu, and Ding Yunlong. 2000. A Brief History of Technological Development. [In Chinese.] Shenyang: Northeastern University Press.