Abstract

What does it mean that humans were not the only hominin? Or, more importantly, what does it mean that other hominins held cultural, biological, and perhaps even linguistic equivalence to human beings? Drawing on mitochondrial DNA analyses, theories of deep history, and attention to the inhuman, this essay argues that such equivalence entails not only the reality of human/nonhuman genetic compatibility but the existence of politics in places and times without humans. Such a politics of non-humans would entail political and social forms playing a central role in the development of humanity. If politico-social experiences in the prehuman and non-human hominin communities actually affected behavior and practices, then the development of humanity is an effect of politics rather than a precondition for it.