I couldn’t think of anybody better to join me for the first show of the new year than my good friend, archaeology and anthropology supremo, the Stone Age Herbalist. As well as being a top Twitter and Substack poster, the Herb has written for MAN’S WORLD more times than I can remember, including a fantastically disgusting piece for last year’s Annual about the history of cannibalism in China. If you haven’t encountered the Herbalist yet, you’re in for a real treat.
Today we’re going to be talking about his new book, Skull Cults and Corpse Brides, which is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon now. This is a wonderful book, packed full of essays that will inform, entertain and unnerve you in equal measure. It deserves a prominent place on your bookshelf next to your copy of his first book, Berserkers, Cannibals and Shamans and such other wonderful books as Raw Egg Nationalism in Theory and Practice, The Eggs Benedict Option and Bronze Age Mindset.
Here’s the blurb for the new book:
Stone Age Herbalist returns with over twenty new essays, covering everything from prehistoric skull cults in Anatolia to contemporary corpse brides in China. While modernity feels fully tamed and safe, nothing could be further from the truth, the world is still full of madness and magic and the past even more so. Essays Vol II brings together sections on archaeology, anthropology, biology and history to shake the foundations of what you thought was real - dogs which defy Darwinism, 21st century concentration camps for witches, murder victims mummified and sold as precious artefacts, forgotten genocides and modern child sacrifice. Alongside the darkness there is also wonder, the origins of metallurgy, Dionysian rewilding, lost tribes, times when farmers abandoned agriculture for hunting and much more. With a new introduction speaking to the value of truthfulness and moving beyond good and evil in scholarship, this volume builds on the previous one in re-imagining the world for the reader. Vitalism, heroic and cruel deeds, scepticism of pretty lies and above all the power of showing nature and life as it really is.
IN THE RAW 14: Stone Age Herbalist