The Great Divide: Nature and Human Nature in the Old World and the New

by Peter Watson

Overview

This “ingenious work about the course of human history” examines why civilizations evolved so differently in the Americas and Eurasia (Kirkus, starred review).

By 15,000 BC, humans had migrated from northeastern Asia across the frozen Bering land bridge to the Americas. When the last Ice Age came to an end, the Bering Strait refilled with water, dividing America from Eurasia. This division continued until Christopher Columbus voyaged to the New World in the fifteenth century.

The Great Divide compares the development of humankind in the Old World and the New between 15,000 BC and AD 1,500. Combining the most up-to-date knowledge in archaeology, anthropology, geology, meteorology, cosmology, and mythology, Peter Watson’s masterful study offers uniquely revealing insight into what it means to be human.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062196675
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	03/19/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	643
Sales rank:	820,747
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Peter Watson has been a senioreditor at the London Sunday Times, a New York correspondentof the London Times, a columnist for theLondon Observer, and a contributor to the New YorkTimes. He has published three exposés on the world ofart and antiquities, and is the author of several booksof cultural and intellectual history. From 1997 to 2007he was a research associate at the McDonald Institutefor Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge.He lives in London.

Peter Watson has been a senioreditor at the London Sunday Times, a New York correspondentof the London Times, a columnist for theLondon Observer, and a contributor to the New YorkTimes. He has published three exposés on the world ofart and antiquities, and is the author of several booksof cultural and intellectual history. From 1997 to 2007he was a research associate at the McDonald Institutefor Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge.He lives in London.

Table of Contents

Author's Note: The Aztecs 'as evil as Nazis' vii

Maps xi

Introduction: 15000 BC-AD 1500: A Unique Period in Human History xxi

Part 1 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 3

2 From Africa to Alaska: The Disasters of Deep Time as Revealed by Myths, Religion and the Rocks 23

3 Siberia and the Sources of Shamanism 48

4 Into a Land Without People 56

Part 2 How Nature Differs in the Old World and the New

5 Rings of Fire and Thermal Trumpets 81

6 Roots v. Seeds and the Anomalous Distribution of Domesticable Mammals 105

7 Fatherhood, Fertility, Farming: 'The Fall' 116

8 Ploughing, Driving, Milking and Riding - four things that never happened in the New World 139

9 Catastrophe and the (All-Important) Origins of Sacrifice 149

10 From Narcotics to Alcohol 165

11 Maize: What People Are Made Of 180

12 The Psychoactive Rainforest and the Anomalous Distribution of Hallucinogens 193

13 Houses of Smoke, Coca and Chocolate 213

14 Wild: the Jaguar, the Bison, the Salmon 226

Part 3 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 249

16 The Steppes, War and 'a new anthropological type' 271

17 The Day of the Jaguar 300

18 The Origins of Monotheism and the End of Sacrifice in the Old World 324

19 The Invention of Democracy, the Alphabet, Money and the Greek Concept of Nature 358

20 Shaman-Kings, World Trees and Vision Serpents 381

21 Bloodletting, Human Sacrifice, Pain and Potlatch 413

22 Monasteries and Mandarins, Muslims and Mongols 444

23 The Feathered Serpent, the Fifth Sun and the Four Suyus 467

Conclusion: The Shaman and the Shepherd: The Great Divide 499

Appendix 1 The (Never-Ending) Dispute of the New World 523

Appendix 2 (Available online): From 100,000 kin groups to 190 Sovereign States: Some Patterns in Cultural Evolution 547

Notes and References 549

Sources for Figures 585

Index 587

Editorial Reviews

Watson, a former senior editor at the London Sunday Times, explores the radically different cultures and fates of the Eastern and Western hemispheres in this sweeping comparative history from the last Ice Age to the Columbian contact. His analysis spotlights gross environmental disparities: compared to the Old World, the Americas had a smaller land mass and population, a geographical layout that impeded cultural and technological exchange, a dearth of domesticable plants and animals and an unstable climate and terrain wracked by hurricanes, droughts, volcanoes, and earthquakes. But Watson reaches further—sometimes implausibly far—in linking physical and ecological conditions to ideology and religion; he contends that the New World’s frequent geoclimatic disasters provoked rites of human sacrifice to propitiate angry gods, and that the Old World’s experience with animal husbandry helped engender both the Judeo-Christian tradition and rationalism. Watson (The Caravaggio Conspiracy) integrates reams of multidisciplinary scholarship into an ambitious and stimulating unifying framework. Inevitably, some of his speculations feel forced, especially on the meanings of the New World’s bloodthirsty rituals and shamanistic jaguar deities, which feel like exotic enigmas beside the more familiar narrative of Old World progress. Still, like Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, his grand-scale history contains fascinating insights at every turn. B&w illus.; maps. Agent: Robin Straus Agency. (July)

Publishers Weekly

An ingenious work about the course of human history. From the time ancient people came into America until Columbus landed, two entirely separate populations existed on Earth, one in each hemisphere. Journalist and cultural historian Watson (The German Genius, 2010, etc.) examines that epoch of over 16,000 years as they adapted, developing different survival strategies, customs, languages, religions and ultimately different civilizations. After leaving Africa, modern humans took about 50,000 years to reach eastern Siberia, arriving during the last ice age when sea levels were lower, exposing a land bridge to Alaska. Around 15,000 years ago, many crossed. They entered a violent hemisphere with destructive hurricanes, dramatic temperature and rainfall variations and 90 percent of the world's tornados, as well as far more seismic and volcanic activity than Old World mainland areas. Added to naturally occurring hallucinogenic and stimulant plants (rarer in the Old World), New World religions and ideology displayed a vivid, apocalyptic tone. Watson discusses what these migrants brought: specific flood and creation myths, genetic markers, language elements and dogs. Agriculture and cities eventually developed, but the New World made do without horses or other beasts of burden, except the llama, which never reached Mexico, as well as large, edible domestic animals, the plow and the wheel. The author seems to know everything about his subject and to hold an opinion on every issue, which he enthusiastically passes on. Watson makes a fascinating case that while there may be a single human nature, long exposure to dissimilar landscapes, food, animals and climate created two unique approaches to this nature.

Kirkus Reviews