Dreams, Prehistory and Robin Hood's Barn

A quick introduction to a new and strange book that endeavors to mend a thread that goes back more than 100,000 years.

Talking about dreams is boring, except when they’re yours.

So let’s talk about a dream you’ve had. It’s the one where you have extra rooms in your home. I know you’ve had it because nearly everyone I’ve ever asked has had the dream, too. In it, you have extra rooms in your home.

It’s funny, because it’s your home. But it’s also not funny, because in real life you know your home inside and out. In the dream there’s this other room, or this other floor, or another apartment. Usually the space is unused. Sometimes there’s furniture you stored, or maybe from the previous tenant. Maybe you sort of knew about the rooms, but forgot.

This shared dream and shared emotion is something I encountered repeatedly while working on Robin Hood’s Barn. It’s a new book about human prehistory by the late Arthur Hill Corwin, formerly a professor at Cooper Union in New York. It just came out this week.

Rewinding past the tape