30,000 Years of Identity

Description

The History and Tradition of Europeans

“Our world will not be saved by blind scholars or jaded erudites. It will be saved by poets and warriors, by those who will have forged the ‘magic sword’ of which Ernst Jünger spoke — the spiritual sword that makes monsters and tyrants turn pale.”

30,000 Years of Identity lays out the reflections of a historian who witnessed the defining events of Europe’s new dark age. Through an exploration of thirty millennia of history, it poses the questions Europeans are now compelled to ask themselves: What is Europe? Who are we, and where are we headed?

For Dominique Venner, Europe did not begin with markets, treaties, or ideologies. It arose from a cultural community whose roots stretch back into the depths of prehistory. It is an ancient civilization, enriched by its many peoples, a common spiritual heritage, and a noble ethos that has often had to be defended.

Returning to these roots and restoring long European memory is the purpose of this book, which presents nothing less than a metaphysics of history. Here, readers rediscover what is uniquely our own: from the cave art of the Stone Age, the Homeric epics, Celtic and Norse legends, and the Greek and Roman legacy to the medieval imagination and the ideals of courtly love. Venner masterfully uncovers the depths and continuity of European identity, encouraging us to rediscover authentic European tradition’s distinctive way of confronting life, death, love, and destiny.