Reimagining Progress of Prehistoric Humans

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.