Before Adam

Before Adam is Jack London’ s fictional tour de force. In it, he brilliantly recreates the dawn of humanity, depicting the prehistoric world as a place of dark conflict where only the strongest will survive. Tormented by a succession of terrifying dreams, the narrator is faced with the strange truth that his consciousness has become intertwined with that of Big Tooth, his Mid-Pleistocene ancestor. Through these dream memories, he witnesses Big Tooth’ s life - a life as one of the 'Folk’ race, without developed language, social structure or fire. He sees, too, the Folk’ s fierce battles for survival against the more advanced Fire People, and the primitive Tree People. As he struggles to make sense of Big Tooth’ s world, he begins questioning the very notion of eugenics, making Before Adam one of the most pertinent works of its time.