Customer Reviews

After Eden: The Evolution of Human Domination

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This book answers many questions about how we humans have gotten to the point we are today. Tracking our pre-history, as this book so capably does, gives us unsettling insights into why we behave as we do toward nature, ourselves, and this magical planet that we inhabit. The first step to correcting any problem is to acknowledge that it exists. This book can be a crucial first step in that process of correction. I highly recommend this important and entertaining book.

Sale has written a comprehensive synthesis of the evolution of human behavior, especially when it comes to the subjugation (and destruction) of our environment. Clearly the human condition in the late Modern period is a major mess: overpopulation, reliance on non-renewable resources, global warming, ocean and freshwater pollution... seems we haven't much time left as a species. Figuring how our evolution led us into this mess is an important question. Though Sale's information and arguments are well researched and cited, he occasionally over-reaches in his conclusions. For example, he concludes that the evolution of human hunting led to hierarchy even though the evidence he presents on hunting cultures such as the !Kung/San falsifies this conclusion. I especially appreciated the final chapter where, based on the long period of Homo erectus evolution, Sale finds a hopeful alternative that could guide us out of our modern mess and into a sustainable postmodern future.

When After Eden is not a subjective, politically correct litany of woe - an indictment against Western (especially American) society - it can be an informative and useful analysis on early man. I eagerly purchased After Eden and looked forward to learning about how man dominated his world. I was expecting an unbiased account based primarily on science, archeology, and anthropology. What I was not prepared for, however, was an infomercial about the evilness of our species. Every development that ensured man's dominance is painted in a malignant light, apparently we are a blight on the planet and must adopt the failed species that died out, like homo erectus. This work does not even pretend to present a balanced view, instead, it consistently inserts little sentences that arrogantly assert the absolute correctness of its subjective judgement. What a dissapointment!

I found this a refreshing take on the stale question of Darwinian evolution, but must hasten to add that I don't really agree with the author's conclusion on the dynamics of descent, whatever the case with his environmental critiques, which give a useful new perspective on ecology. The book is nonetheless definitely worth reading, despite what seems to me its speculative claims and somewhat preposterious plug for Homo Erectus. The implicit Darwinian assumptions of the account, however, vitiate the conclusions. Maybe Darwinian selectionism appeals so much because it strengthens the very mindset of 'Sapiens' the author deplores and that is so destructive of the environment.
This Darwinian view is producing retarded scientific beliefs systems on evolution making any paradigm renewal almost impossible. And yet the account of Darwin of human evolution by natural selection is almost certainly wrong, or incomplete, as Alfred Wallace suddenly realized, in his retreat on the descent of man.
It is important to remember how little we really know about human evolution, far to little to really conclude anything about evolutionary dynamics. Meanwhile the evidence, such as it is, for a 'Great Explosion' suggests we are missing something important.
For a falsification of the Darwinian account, cf. the reviewer's _World History and The Eonic Effect_. This book makes clear that high-speed evolution occurs so fast that we need a data record at the level of centuries to see the dynamics.