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.