I am exploring the uses of the historic-genetic theory of culture by Günter Dux and Laura Ibarra García, in the context of the brazilian field of study called “uses of the past”, as a historical and anthropological research tool. My doctoral research focusses, specifically, in the study and analysis of the “arkhé” elements of the historical matrix: that is, the anthropogenetic basis present in the narrative of the field of our “primitive past”. That is, the anthropological basis and matrix any given author places located at the beginnings of the history a nation. To sample this strata, we dig into the writing of historybooks for children and young adults, as materialized in the works of colombian amateur historians and archeaologists Jesus Maria Henao (1870-1944) and Gerardo Arrubla (1882-1846), and brazilian historian João Ribeiro (1860-1934).