Abstract
The popularity of books such as Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind suggests that universal history-writing has a continuous not a broken past. Rather than “returning,” it is perhaps the most enduring genre of all. This review essay explores the deep-history element of universal histories and the ongoing purchase of the stadial tradition for a new history of the species. Why are deep histories of the species so reliably appealing, and what do they mean in the twenty-first century? Although the Anthropocene would seem to be the pertinent context for this ongoing historiography, this essay suggests that the new domain of genetic genealogy powerfully individualizes and commercializes deep history for neoliberal times.