“The character of Ishmael didn’t appear until the book’s final version,” Quinn says, “but I always had the idea of someone on the outside looking in.” Ishmael takes his name from “the prototypic biblical figure of the outcast for the very reason that everything he says goes against the grain.” Most history is written by Takers, which is why Quinn used the device of an outsider-the wise ape-who teaches that humans must learn to regard themselves as part of nature. Quinn’s book interprets Genesis as a piece of political propaganda written by a tribe of Semitic hunter-gatherers (Leavers) in danger of being overrun by their agriculturalist neighbors to the north (Takers). Leavers are the nomadic, aboriginal peoples who leave the Earth as they find it. The Takers are the developed societies that arose with the agricultural revolution-people who alter nature to suit man’s needs. According to Quinn’s view, around the time the Book of Genesis was written, humanity came to be divided into Takers and Leavers.
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