The Other Side of Eden: Hunters, Farmers, and the Shaping of the World

Hugh Brody crystallizes three decades of studying, learning from, crusading for, and thinking about hunter-gatherers in this profound and provocative book. Contrary to stereotype, he says, it is the farmers and their colonizing descendants—ourselves—who are the true nomads, doomed to the geographical and spiritual restlessness embodied in the story of Genesis. By contrast, the hunters have a deep attachment to the place and ways of their ancestors that stems from an enviable sense, distinctively expressed in thought, word, and act, of being part of the fabric of the natural and spiritual worlds.