[D66] After Eden: The Evolution of Human Domination

[R.O.]

After Eden: The Evolution of Human Domination 
<https://read.dukeupress.edu/books/book/1098/After-EdenThe-Evolution-of-Human-Domination> 



  After Eden: The Evolution of Human Domination

By
Kirkpatrick Sale
Duke University Press
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822388517
ISBN electronic:
978-0-8223-8851-7
Publication date:
2006

When did the human species turn against the planet that we depend on for 
survival? Human industry and consumption of resources have altered the 
climate, polluted the water and soil, destroyed ecosystems, and rendered 
many species extinct, vastly increasing the likelihood of an ecological 
catastrophe. How did humankind come to rule nature to such an extent? To 
regard the planet’s resources and creatures as ours for the taking? To 
find ourselves on a seemingly relentless path toward ecocide?

In After Eden, Kirkpatrick Sale answers these questions in a radically 
new way. Integrating research in paleontology, archaeology, and 
anthropology, he points to the beginning of big-game hunting as the 
origin of Homo sapiens’ estrangement from the natural world. Sale 
contends that a new, recognizably modern human culture based on the 
hunting of large animals developed in Africa some 70,000 years ago in 
response to a fierce plunge in worldwide temperature triggered by an 
enormous volcanic explosion in Asia. Tracing the migration of 
populations and the development of hunting thousands of years forward in 
time, he shows that hunting became increasingly adversarial in relation 
to the environment as people fought over scarce prey during Europe’s 
glacial period between 35,000 and 10,000 years ago. By the end of that 
era, humans’ idea that they were the superior species on the planet, 
free to exploit other species toward their own ends, was well established.

After Eden is a sobering tale, but not one without hope. Sale asserts 
that Homo erectus, the variation of the hominid species that preceded 
Homo sapiens and survived for nearly two million years, did not attempt 
to dominate the environment. He contends that vestiges of this more 
ecologically sound way of life exist today—in some tribal societies, in 
the central teachings of Hinduism and Buddhism, and in the core 
principles of the worldwide environmental movement—offering redemptive 
possibilities for ourselves and for the planet.

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