The paper is a summary of the Uppsala part of a series of individual research projects in connection with a joint research program, “Coast to Coast - Stone Age Societies in change”, carried out as collaboration between the Departments of archaeology in Uppsala, Göteborg, Lund and Stockholm. It covers the cultural development in Central Scandinavia in the early part of the Holocene, from the deglaciation (8000 cal BC) to the Late Neolithic (1800 cal BC). The historical substrate, the socio/spatial structures of hunter gatherer groups in the area, decisive for the character of the neolithization is discussed in terms of marriage networks between different exogamous bands and the development of a lineage-based society. Other themes taken up in the project is changes in relation to hunter gatherer social ideologies, the importance of history in cultural reproduction and change, the reuse of the past, social tensions and gender structures as expressed in the built environment, material culture as vehicles for power struggles and craft specialization in stratified societies. The paper ends with a critical evaluation of archaeology. The search for origins lures us to see what needs to be seen in prehistory. It is stated that the past has always been returned to and made active in socio-political processes; the modern world we live in is no exception.