It is not often that one reads a book that discusses both the sixteenth-century Spanish human rights advocate Bartholomé de Las Casas and the twentieth-century American neo-Nazi Richard Butler, but David Livingstone's latest monograph does just that. Livingstone offers a history of pre-Adamism – the idea that human beings inhabited the earth before Adam and that the descendants of these pre-Adamic ancestors may still occupy the planet. In telling pre-Adamism's story, including its engagements with race, religion and the science of human evolution, Livingstone covers a millennium of theology, natural philosophy, geography, ethnography and anthropology. So even-handed is his synthetic treatment that all readers are doubtless going to learn much and come away impressed.

In the 1920s the Canadian creationist George McCready Price succinctly summarized the centrality of Adam and the issue of human origins for those who hold the account presented in Genesis to be literally true: ‘No Adam, No Fall; No Fall, No Atonement; No Atonement, No Savior’ went his oft-quoted syllogism. Without a historical Adam, there would be no original sin and no reason for the atoning death of Christ. Thus the very foundation of Christianity would be removed. Yet it was obvious to many readers of Genesis that there were problems with the narrative if read literally – one such problem being the question of the origin of Cain's wife and why Cain feared for his life after being banished by God. Could it have been that there were humans who were not descendants of Adam?

Livingstone begins his account by outlining three further issues that raised problems for the historicity of the Genesis account of creation. The first of these was the increasing availability of non-Judaeo-Christian accounts that clearly were of ancient origin yet went against claims made in the canonical texts. The second was the presence of ‘monstrous races’ as detailed by Pliny, Strabo and Herodotus, and the problematic relationship of these races to humans. If these existed – and few doubted the fact – were they human, and therefore needing to be baptized? Lastly, and relatedly, there was the issue of the inhabitants of the New World. If they were human – and thus in need of baptism – how did they fit into a scheme that saw all humans as descendants of Shem, Ham or Japheth? Equally as important, how did they end up on the other side of the world? Indeed the possibility of extraterrestrial life – as raised by Giordano Bruno and Tomasso Campanella – only exacerbated these problems. These were serious questions that worried the best minds of the early modern period.

A French theologian, Isaac La Peyrère, offered one solution in 1655 in his work Prae-Adamitae. The work's English subtitle gave a clue to La Peyrère's methods: A Discourse Upon the Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Verses of the Fifth Chapter of the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Romans. By Which Are Prov'd, That Men were Created before Adam. Le Peyrère used scriptural exegesis and non-Christian sources to argue for a polygenism that was not tainted with racial inequality. La Peyrère's claims went beyond simple advocacy of plural origins for humans; he argued that the Scriptures were fallible human transcriptions, that Moses was not the sole author of the Pentateuch, that the Noachian Flood was localized, and that Adam was only the father of the Jews. Of course this early form of biblical criticism could not go unpunished, and La Peyrère was forced to recant his views. As Livingstone notes, this recantation did not, however, prevent the pre-Adamite theory from having significant impact on future thought in relation to the origin of humans.

A major portion of Livingstone's account is taken up with the question of how individuals – whether creationist or evolutionist, believer or infidel – wrestled with pre-Adamism and its manifest consequences. It is impossible to summarize the rich vein that he successfully mines. Despite the idea being favoured by atheists and unbelievers who sought to undermine Scripture, pre-Adamism became equally deployed as a means to preserve scriptural reliability when faced with such criticism. Interpretation could allow for two origins of humans as recounted in Genesis, the first of the human species and the second of Adam, who was thus seen as father of the Jews (or, in certain readings, of Caucasians or Aryans). Ethnographers in the nineteenth century were divided between polygenism and monogenism, the former receiving support from the creationist Louis Agassiz and the racist writings of Samuel Morton, Josiah Nott and George Gliddon, the latter ultimately underpinned by Darwin's work. Pre-Adamism thus fed into the rhetoric of antebellum America and became as important politically as it was theologically. In opposition to the claims of many modern anti-evolutionists, Livingstone makes it clear that many apologists for slavery (and racial inequality) sought support not in the writings of Darwin but in Scripture, some going as far as to claim that Eve's sin was one of miscegenation with a black pre-Adamite.

The amazing scope of Adam's Ancestors contributes to its appeal, and it can be highly recommended both for its sweeping synthesis and for the nature of the questions it raises in the mind of the reader. Knowing already about, for example, Agassiz, Thomas Chalmers, Hugh Miller, George Pye Smith, Robert Chambers and St George Jackson Mivart, I was pleasantly surprised to encounter these theologically diverse individuals here, often in unexpected contexts. Historians of other eras are likely to have similar encounters.