The Fall: The Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of A New Era

The Fall: The Insanity of the Ego in Human History and the Dawning of A New Era is a book by Steve Taylor PhD, a psychologist at Leeds Beckett University. Originally published in 2005 with a new edition that includes an afterword published later in 2018, it claims that "It is not natural for human beings to kill each other, for men to oppress women, for individuals to accumulate massive wealth and power, or to abuse nature", and that human nature changed after a period of aridification 5900 years ago. (The title of the book refers to the Biblical story of the fall of man; coincidence?) Some of the book's findings are now mainstream views. It is widely accepted by anthropologists that there was a long period of 'prehistoric peace.' For example, such is the view of the mainstream popular books Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens, and Rutger Bregman's Humankind. It is also widely accepted that prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups - and contemporary hunter-gatherer groups who follow the same 'immediate return' lifestyle that our ancestors once did - were egalitarian, and more gender-neutral.

The science
Furthermore, The Fall's thesis also includes some climate science. As the name suggests, an aridification event occurred 5900 years ago- and it was one of the most severe events during the It is responsible for the current desertification of the Sahara Desert and Northern Africa in general, which devastated and all but wiped out the ancient neolithic civilizations that had once thrived in this "Green Sahara". The inhabitants of the areas affected were forced to move or die, much like the Ubaidians (ancient Sumerians), who also suddenly disappeared around this time and were soon replaced with the Uruks. Occurences of the damage and climate change from the event were the Old World: in China, for instance, the event marked a period of cold.