Ishmael

blocked by what?”

“By the Semites, apparently.”

“Why? Why were the Semites blocking it?”

“I don’t know.”

“What were the Semites? Were they agriculturalists?”

“No. The map makes it clear that they weren’t a part of what was going on among the Takers. So I assume they were Leavers.”

“Leavers, yes, but no longer hunter–gatherers. They had evolved another adaptation that was to be traditional for Semitic peoples.”

“Oh. They were pastoralists.”

“Of course. Herders.” He indicated the border between the Takers’ Chalcolithic Culture and the Semites. “So what was happening here?”

“I don’t know.”

Ishmael nodded toward the bibles at my feet. “Read the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis and then you’ll know.”

I picked up the one on top and turned to chapter four. A couple minutes later, I muttered, “Good lord.”

10

After reading the story in all three versions, I looked up and said, “What was happening along that border was that Cain was killing Abel. The tillers of the soil were watering their fields with the blood of Semitic herders.”

“Of course. What was happening there was what has always happened along the borders of Taker expansion: The Leavers were being killed off so that more land could be put under cultivation.” Ishmael picked up his pad and opened it to his own map of this period. “As you see, the hen–scratches of the agriculturalists have swarmed over the entire area—except for the territory occupied by the Semites. Here at the border that separates tillers of the soil from Semitic herders, Cain and Abel confront each other.”

I studied the map for a few moments and then shook my head. “And biblical scholars don’t understand this?”

“I cannot say, of course, that not a single scholar has ever understood this. But most read the story as if it were set in an historical never–never land, like one of Aesop’s fables. It would scarcely occur to them to understand it as a piece of Semitic war propaganda.”

“That’s what it is, all right. I know it’s always been a mystery as to why God accepted Abel and his offering and rejected Cain and his offering. This explains it. With this story, the Semites were telling their children, ‘God is on our side. He loves us herders but hates those murderous tillers of the soil from the north.’ ”

“That’s right. If you read it as a story that originated among your own cultural ancestors, it’s incomprehensible. It only begins to make sense when you realize that it originated among the enemies of your cultural ancestors.”

“Yes.” I sat there blinking for a few moments, then looked at Ishmael’s map again. “If the tillers of the soil from the north were Caucasians,” I said, “then the mark of Cain is this.” I pointed to my own fair or maggot–colored face.

“It could be. Obviously we’ll never know for sure what the authors of the story had in mind.”

“But it makes sense this way,” I insisted. “The mark was given to Cain as a warning to others: ‘Leave this man alone. This is a dangerous man, one who exacts a sevenfold vengeance.’ Certainly a lot of people all over the world have learned that it doesn’t pay to mess with people with white faces.”

Ishmael shrugged, unconvinced or perhaps just uninterested.

11

“In the previous map, I went to the trouble of laying down hundreds of dots to represent Leaver peoples living in the Mideast when your agricultural revolution began. What do you suppose happened to these peoples between the time of that map and the time of this map?”

“I would have to say that either they were overrun and assimilated or they took up agriculture in imitation of the Takers.”

Ishmael nodded. “Doubtless many of these peoples had their own tales to tell of this revolution, their own ways of explaining how these people from the Fertile Crescent came to be the way they were, but only one of these tales survived—the one told by the Semites to their children about the Fall of Adam and the slaughter of Abel by his brother Cain. It survived because the Takers never managed to overrun the Semites, and the Semites refused to take up the agricultural life. Even their eventual Taker descendants, the Hebrews, who preserved the story without fully understanding it, couldn’t work up any enthusiasm for the peasant life–style. And this is how it happened that, with the spread of Christianity and of the Old Testament, the Takers came to adopt as their own a story an enemy once told to denounce them.”

12

“So we come again to this question: Where did the Semites get the idea that the people of the Fertile Crescent had eaten at the gods’ own tree of knowledge?”

“Ah,” I said. “I would say it was a sort of reconstruction. They looked at the people they were fighting and said, ‘My God, how did they get this way?’ ”

“And what was their answer?”

“Well… ‘What’s wrong with these people? What’s wrong with our brothers from the north? Why are they doing this to us? They act like…’ Let me think about this for a bit.”

“Take your time.”

“Okay,” I said a few minutes later. “Here’s how it would look to the Semites, I think. ‘What’s going on here is something wholly new. These aren’t raiding parties. These aren’t people drawing a line and baring their teeth at us to make sure we know they’re there. These guys are saying… Our brothers from the north are saying that we’ve got to die. They’re saying Abel has to be wiped out. They’re saying we’re not to be allowed to live. Now that’s something new, and we don’t get it. Why can’t they live up there and be farmers and let us live down here and be herders? Why do they have to murder us?’

“ ‘Something really weird must have happened up there to turn these people into murderers. What could it have been? Wait, a second… Look at the way these people live. Nobody has ever lived this way before. They’re not just saying that we have to die. They’re saying that everything has to die. They’re not just killing us, they’re killing everything. They’re saying, “Okay, lions, you’re dead. We’ve had it with you. You’re out of here.” They’re saying, “Okay, wolves, we’ve had it with you too. You’re out of here.” They’re saying… “Nobody eats but us. All this food belongs to us and no one else can have any without our permission.” They’re saying, “What we want to live lives and what we want to die dies.”

“ ‘That’s it! They’re acting as if they were the gods themselves. They’re acting as if they eat at the gods’ own tree of wisdom, as though they were as wise as the gods and could send life and death wherever they please. Yes, that’s it. That’s what must have happened up there. These people found the gods’ own tree of wisdom and stole some of its fruit.

“ ‘Aha! Right! These are an accursed people! You can see that right off the bat. When the gods found out