While historical materialism and evolutionism provide similar explanations and ideas regarding the cause of long-term social change, the two theories are rarely used in conjunction with one another. In Deep History, the author David Laibman addresses some of the standard questions of...

In this article I reconsider Laibman’s Deep History (2007) in the light of Niles Eldredge and Stephan Jay Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium. I argue that the theory of punctuated equilibrium explains (1) why conceptions of inevitability and directionality in intellectual evolution may...