Author’s Note: The Aztecs ‘as evil as Nazis’

Maps

Introduction: 1500 BC–AD 1500: A Unique Period in Human History
 
Part One: HOW THE FIRST AMERICANS DIFFERED FROM OLD WORLD PEOPLES

1 - From Africa to Alaska: The Great Journey as Revealed in the Genes, Language and the Stones
2 - From Africa to Alaska: The Disasters of Deep Time as Revealed by Myths, Religion and the Rocks
3 - Siberia and the Sources of Shamanism
4 - Into a Land Without People
 
Part Two: HOW NATURE DIFFERS IN THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW

5 - Rings of Fire and Thermal Trumpets
6 - Roots v. Seeds and the Anomalous Distribution of Domesticable Mammals
7 - Fatherhood, Fertility, Farming: ‘The Fall’
8 - Ploughing, Driving, Milking, Riding: four things that never happened in the New World
9 - Catastrophe and the (All-Important) Origins of Sacrifice
10 - From Narcotics to Alcohol
11 - Maize: What People Are Made Of
12 - The Psychoactive Rainforest and the Anomalous Distribution of Hallucinogens
13 - Houses of Smoke, Coca and Chocolate
14 - Wild: the Jaguar, the Bison, the Salmon
 
Part Three: WHY HUMAN NATURE EVOLVED DIFFERENTLY IN THE OLD WORLD AND THE NEW

15 - Eridu and Aspero: the First Cities Seven and a Half Thousand Miles Apart
16 - The Steppes, War and ‘a new anthropological type’
17 - The Day of the Jaguar
18 - The Origins of Monotheism and the End of Sacrifice in the Old World
19 - The Invention of Democracy, the Alphabet, Money and the Greek Concept of Nature
20 - Shaman-Kings, World Trees and Vision Serpents
21 - Bloodletting, Human Sacrifice, Pain and Potlatch
22 - Monasteries and Mandarins, Muslims and Mongols
23 - The Feathered Serpent, the Fifth Sun and the Four Suyus
 
Conclusion
    The Shaman and the Shepherd: The Great Divide
 
Appendices
    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
 
Index