From the Book - 1st Harper Perennial ed.
Introduction: 15000 BC-AD 1500 : a unique period in human history. How the first Amerians differed from Old World peoples. From Africa to Alaska: the great journey as revealed in the genes, language and the stones --
From Africa to Alaska: the disasters of deep time as revealed by myths, religion and the rocks --
Siberia and the sources of shamanism --
Into a land without people. Part two: How nature differs in the old world and the new. Rings of fire and thermal trumpets --
Roots vs. seeds and the anomalous distribution of domesticable mammals --
Fatherhood, fertility, farming: 'The Fall' --
Ploughing, driving, milking and riding-four things that never happened in the New World --
Catastrophe and the (all-important) origins of sacrifice --
From narcotics to alcohol --
Maize: what people are made of --
The psychoactive rainforest and the anomalous distribution of hallucinogens --
Houses of smoke, coca and chocolate --
Wild: the jaguar, the bison, the salmon. Why human nature evolved differently in the Old World and the New. Eridu and Aspero: the first cities seven and a half thousand miles apart --
The Steppes, war and 'a new anthropological type' --
The origins of monotheism and the end of sacrifice in the new world --
The invention of democracy, the alphabet, money, and the Greek concept of nature --
Shaman kings, world trees and vision serpents --
Bloodletting, human sacrifice, pain and potlatch --
Monasteries and Mandarins, Muslims and Mongols The feathered serpent, the fifth sun and the four Suyus Conclusion: The shaman and shepherd : the great divide
Appendix 1: The (never-ending) dispute of the New World
Appendix 2 (available online): From 100,000 kin groups to 190 sovereign states : some patterns in cultural evolution.
