Introduction  1

1. The Dawn of Modern Culture: 70,000-50,000 Years Ago  11

2. The Conquest of Europe: 55,000-20,000 Years Ago  37

3. Intensification and Agriculture: 20,000-5,000 Years Ago  71

4. The Erectus Alternative: 1,800,000-30,000 Years Ago  105

Notes  139

Source Notes  145

Bibliography  175

Acknowledgments  179

Index  181

"[An] elegant, brief . . . and very readable re-telling of human prehistory. Sale nicely conveys the synergy of human relations with nature—domination isn't a simple one-time event but rather an evolving process, with humans at particular times and places making changes to their natural setting and those changes in turn causing humans to change and make further changes to nature, or to migrate with their nature-dominating technologies to new places and resume the process there. Although the book's central idea is quite original, it is well-grounded in current, mainstream archeological and anthropological scholarship, documented in fully 40 pages at the back of the book."—Tricia Shapiro, Asheville Global Report

“After Eden is . . . packed with information, extremely well-written, and full of stimulating ideas concerning the origins of domestication. . . . Dense but highly stimulating and exciting to read. A valuable addition to the anti-civ library. Grab it.”—Green Anarchy

“After Eden offers not only a detailed and integrated view of human history, but also encouraging glimpses into tools people might muster towards addressing the predicament we have all, in one way or another, inherited from history.”—Chellis Glendinning, Resurgence

“After Eden is a thought-provoking attempt to understand the rapacity that is now so clearly characteristic of homo sapiens. . . .”—Marc Maximov, The Independent Weekly (Durham, NC)

“Kirkpatrick Sale is the outstanding radical writer of the English-speaking world today. . . . He reaches some mind boggling conclusions, but what is riveting is the route by which he travels: how man the hunter-gatherer moved on to become the agriculturalist, and then man the urban city dweller, all the time stressing how the basic psychic cords of his nature from his earliest stages have continued to persist and how their failure to prevail can only be as transient as they may prove tragic.”—John Papworth, The Ecologist

“Critically, [Sale] underscores our human propensity to live in an objective world, and he does so in a flowing, friendly writing style that provokes admiration and applause. He carefully documents his way through the paleoanthropological literature in his accounting of our evolution.”—Miles Richardson, PaleoAnthropology

“Recommended.”—M. J. O’Brien, Choice

“[W]hat sets After Eden apart from other similar works and what excites me as a social scientist, is Sale’s social and critical emancipatory point of departure and the explicit lessons he tries to draw from the ancient past for the present . . . . [T]he central point of Sale’s book is one that cannot be ignored.”—Bram Buscher, Electronic Green Journal

“After Eden is a gift, the first fruits of six years of reflection. It is an offering of archaeology, anthropology, paleontology, sociology, and a dozen cousin disciplines upon the altar of theology. For surely the reader who enters into Kirkpatrick Sale’s world will emerge wanting to ask God a few questions.”—Elena Thompson, Anglican Theological Review

“This is a highly readable book. The value of this study is that it investigates an achievement that many take for granted (humans becoming the dominant species on this planet). This work, both well researched and documented, also provides extensive notes.”—Larry Benson, Environmental History

"[An] elegant, brief . . . and very readable re-telling of human prehistory. Sale nicely conveys the synergy of human relations with nature—domination isn't a simple one-time event but rather an evolving process, with humans at particular times and places making changes to their natural setting and those changes in turn causing humans to change and make further changes to nature, or to migrate with their nature-dominating technologies to new places and resume the process there. Although the book's central idea is quite original, it is well-grounded in current, mainstream archeological and anthropological scholarship, documented in fully 40 pages at the back of the book."—Tricia Shapiro, Asheville Global Report

“After Eden is . . . packed with information, extremely well-written, and full of stimulating ideas concerning the origins of domestication. . . . Dense but highly stimulating and exciting to read. A valuable addition to the anti-civ library. Grab it.”—Green Anarchy

“After Eden offers not only a detailed and integrated view of human history, but also encouraging glimpses into tools people might muster towards addressing the predicament we have all, in one way or another, inherited from history.”—Chellis Glendinning, Resurgence

“After Eden is a thought-provoking attempt to understand the rapacity that is now so clearly characteristic of homo sapiens. . . .”—Marc Maximov, The Independent Weekly (Durham, NC)

“Kirkpatrick Sale is the outstanding radical writer of the English-speaking world today. . . . He reaches some mind boggling conclusions, but what is riveting is the route by which he travels: how man the hunter-gatherer moved on to become the agriculturalist, and then man the urban city dweller, all the time stressing how the basic psychic cords of his nature from his earliest stages have continued to persist and how their failure to prevail can only be as transient as they may prove tragic.”—John Papworth, The Ecologist

“Critically, [Sale] underscores our human propensity to live in an objective world, and he does so in a flowing, friendly writing style that provokes admiration and applause. He carefully documents his way through the paleoanthropological literature in his accounting of our evolution.”—Miles Richardson, PaleoAnthropology

“Recommended.”—M. J. O’Brien, Choice

“[W]hat sets After Eden apart from other similar works and what excites me as a social scientist, is Sale’s social and critical emancipatory point of departure and the explicit lessons he tries to draw from the ancient past for the present . . . . [T]he central point of Sale’s book is one that cannot be ignored.”—Bram Buscher, Electronic Green Journal

“After Eden is a gift, the first fruits of six years of reflection. It is an offering of archaeology, anthropology, paleontology, sociology, and a dozen cousin disciplines upon the altar of theology. For surely the reader who enters into Kirkpatrick Sale’s world will emerge wanting to ask God a few questions.”—Elena Thompson, Anglican Theological Review

“This is a highly readable book. The value of this study is that it investigates an achievement that many take for granted (humans becoming the dominant species on this planet). This work, both well researched and documented, also provides extensive notes.”—Larry Benson, Environmental History

“Kirkpatrick Sale has been enlightening us on the issue of scale for a generation now, and in this new book he uses the concept to help us understand our own consciousness. A fascinating book!”— Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future

“After Eden is broadly and punctiliously researched and urgently argued. Its central idea may be disputed but not ignored. Kirkpatrick Sale has always been both a deeply countercultural thinker and also immensely cultured.”—Lionel Tiger, author of The Decline of Males: The First Look at an Unexpected New World for Men and Women

“The things that Kirkpatrick Sale writes about are near and dear to me—things that I have spent most of my adult life thinking deeply about. Seldom would I have the confidence to reach judgments from the evidence as boldly as does Sale, but I suspect that he is right in most of his conclusions.”—Steven E. Churchill, Department of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy, Duke University

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