PALLADIUM 19: Long History will ship to all Palladium members in December. Subscribe today to receive your copy of our fall 2025 print edition, featuring in-depth essays examining the latest theory and evidence, both genetic and archaeological, for tens of thousands of years of continent-spanning trade networks, monument construction, and complex settled societies of our ancestors, which have been neglected and downplayed by modern opinion-makers.

Our forefathers did not live in caves and grunt over campfires, like the “noble savages” imagined by Locke, Marx, and twentieth-century anthropologists. More importantly, these were not peaceful and inward-looking societies. The genetic record shows that entire peoples embarked on great treks over land and across the seas, often violently replacing previous inhabitants in battles and wars long lost to memory. Our ancestors weren’t always nomadic. Settled communities did not originate with the domestication of grain after the end of the Ice Age, but were preceded by permanent villages and towns sustained by abundant and sometimes gardened forests, as well as fishing. Our ancestors lived this way for tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of years. This, rather than the primitive utopia or even the wild savannah, was likely the ancestral environment Homo sapiens evolved in over this long era of prehistory.

As these complex societies occasionally advanced, mastering metals and developing writing, there was no linear guarantee of progress. As societies grow more complex and develop, becoming what we call civilizations, they sometimes fail and collapse without passing on the torch of progress. The evidence of both prehistory dug up from the ground and of written history shows there is nothing certain about the future of our own civilization. Civilizations rise and fall. Mankind relearns and forgets this lesson many times over.

PALLADIUM 19: Long History retells the story of mankind, setting outdated and flawed narratives right, and with them all our assumptions of humanity’s future. A timely task urgently needed, lest we risk becoming just another layer of ruins and bones, buried and forgotten under the feet of future generations. Like all our print editions, PALLADIUM 19 is a luxury creation designed for aesthetic enjoyment and focused thinking. It is a gift for our members and not for sale. Become a Palladium member today to receive your copy. 

Additionally, the first ten first-time subscribers will receive the gift of an exclusive copy of PALLADIUM 07: Garden Planet featuring nuclear activist Isabelle Boemeke in a visionary photoshoot by Brian Ziff.

By becoming a Palladium member, you are buying in to a project to reshape the future of American and global governance. Your support is critical for our work and is tax-deductible: Palladium is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and non-partisan institution.

By upgrading to a Supporting Membership, you will also get access to exclusive perks, including a priority invitation to attend our quarterly magazine launch parties. There are five spots reserved for new supporting members at PALLADIUM Magazine’s Fourth Anniversary in Print party in San Francisco, California next month, on December 5th. These events bring our community and top collaborators together, including our editorial team, donors, authors, and artists. 

Supporting Members will also receive rare out-of-print editions allowing you to complete your collection. This quarter, new supporting members will receive PALLADIUM 06: Imperial Frontiers, the iconic edition where we began our investigation of global empire and its limits. Those who have been sustaining members for the past two years will also receive the iconic  PALLADIUM 12: Silicon Nemesis featuring Grimes, allowing them to complete their collection of Year Three of Palladium in print. Upgrade to a Supporting Membership today here.

We hope you will become a member today to receive your copy of PALLADIUM 19: Long History and to support this vital project.

*All members also receive benefits of lower tiers. New subscribers will receive upcoming quarterly print editions. PALLADIUM 19: Long History ships internationally. Our print publication is a quarterly newsletter that informs members about our public interest research, reporting, and analysis.

Featuring

Why Civilization Is Older Than We Thought by Samo Burja. New discoveries are adding millennia to our past. The implications should change our future.

Mariners at the Dawn of History by Tristan Søbye Rapp. Archaeological finds hundreds of thousands of years old have shown human settlement of many of the world’s remote islands, challenging our assumptions of a primitive prehistory.

Genomics Has Revealed An Age Undreamed Of by Razib Khan. The genomics revolution has shown us our barbaric past. It now also forces us to decide our future.

Our Knowledge of History Decays Over Time by Ben Landau-Taylor and Samo Burja. Despite modern approaches to archaeology and preservation, as history moves forward, we will only lose knowledge of the past.

The Native Americans Before the Native Americans by Razib Khan. New findings and genetic evidence suggest that people came to America more than 30,000 years ago, before the peak of the Last Ice Age.

The Birth and Burial of Evolutionary Science in Australia by Jack Mungo. Activists, often of mostly European ancestry, have appropriated prehistoric cultures and are systematically destroying fossils vital to understanding Australia’s past and human evolution in general. 

Will Future Civilizations Bother to Excavate Our Remains? by Ben Landau-Taylor. The practice of archaeology is almost unique to our contemporary Western civilization rather than universal, and it is unlikely to be continued by future civilizations.

Why Civilizations Collapse by Samo Burja. We have to evaluate the perceptions that mint facts and theory, not merely peruse the body of social, historical, and political theories handed down to us.