Recent history has been unusually eventful in the humanities, with harshening polit- q1ical circumstances in some countries but also attempts to carve out new missions andlink the humanities to agendas of relevance on environment, climate, energy, digitalization,migration, and other contemporary challenges. In this context, might therebe cause to review the history of humanities as informed by the ongoing rethinkingof humanities futures? The point of departure of this article is that there are historicalhumanities that actually were not so much “humanities” at all in their own time. Ratherthey were integrative parts of domains such as natural history, field exploration,museums, and collections—a differently embedded version of the humanities thatare now reappearing as an elemental, geo-anthropological project under conceptssuch as the Anthropocene. This history is far from unknown, but it has been less visible,concealed by the historicizing of science, and related intellectual and institutionalhistories, which have de-emphasized their humanities past. This article attempts tomake it more visible as a relevant “deep” history of the reconfigurations of humanitiesthat are emerging in the twenty-first century.