Saharasia: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence, In the Deserts of the Old World

I want to thank Amazon reviewer J Studebaker for connecting me with this book. It is an exciting read! It has been a long time since I felt impelled to underline and post-it the pages of a book. James DeMeo's Saharasia is full of sweeping, courageous and inspiring insights marred by jarring blind spots. He says that the drying up of a wide swath of land from Africa through the Middle East to Central Asia caused continued forced migration and psychological desiccation. That led humanity away from the easy going, sex positive ways of the mother goddess to the male oriented warfare and cruelty now considered normal. He painstakingly documents this theory, but his documentation is flawed. For one thing, the evidence for the previous state of "matrist" bliss is scanty, with much of it coming from very old data compiled by early anthropologists in small, now destroyed, communities in places like the Trobriand Islands. He himself points out that people told those anthropologists what they wanted them to know and what they were willing to disclose. The anthropologists also interpreted their data through their own prejudices. One blind spot is DeMeo's lumping of homosexuality into the category of an effect of the "patrist" repression of "healthy" heterosexuality. Another is his worshipful attitude toward Wilhelm Reich. DeMeo gives Reich, originally a follower of Freud, credit where credit is due. He first outlined the process of human "armoring" in the face of prolonged trauma. DeMeo is eager to point out that while Freud first pointed to the importance of the "pleasure principle", he was wrong late in his life, denying the reality of the child abuse reported by patients. When it comes to Reich however, DeMeo is defensive about everything Reich espoused, even the supposedly curative powers of "Orgone energy", a concept which derailed Reich's career late in his life. DeMeo blames the patrist "powers that be" for that. I enjoyed this book most because it made me think. Although I would like to, I am not sure I agree that in a state of nature human beings are warm, nurturing and sexually permissive. Perhaps we are a complex mix of both open and armored traits and can go either way depending on conditions. In other words, we adapt and survive. I am willing to accept that the change in the earth's climate that started approximately 6,000 years ago has led to the current cultural climate as well. That doesn't mean that we can go back to Eden. We need new solutions and we have to stop making our problems worse. Future generations will have to find a way to survive the global warming we are precipitating and all its attending climate changes. We ain't seen nothing yet!

This should be a standard text book in our schools. It's a complex tapestry of history, meteorology, archaeology, sociology, anthropology and psychology resting on the profound bedrock of Dr Wilhelm Reich's psychoanalytical discoveries. It explains so much. If you understand why some folk are so different from you and seem to want to hurt and pervert you and why they themselves appear trapped in a seemingly unbreakable generation after generation vicious circle of physical and pyschological repression and oppression - you can stop hating them and start trying to work out how to help the poor souls. This book helped me gain that understanding. To start with the content made me want to weep in despair but I soon realised that this book is a way post to a better future. Thank you James DeMeo and thank you Dr Reich.

Saharasia is well written and researched. Provides the answers to many questions, such as how does a relatively affluent society produce child abuse, violence towards women and vulnerable members of society. Mass murder, devastation of the environment, James addresses these issues, and provides evidence of previous peaceful matriachal societies. A very enlightening book, I would recommend that anyone concerned with welfare of the vulnerable, particulary children, and our environment read this. The more aware we as a society are of the underlying factors, the more we will be able to change our world.

Just started reading and I recall my early years in graduate studies. DeMeo is right, no mention of Wilhelm Reich in journals, textbooks...not even a reference. I often cited Reich's work in my research. First interest and studied in the 70's, this work brings prior understanding to another level. Thought provoking and well researched, highly recommended.

This is probably the best researched book to date on how environmental destruction has affected society over the course of history. DeMeo shows with charts, maps and studies how we have systematically turned vast regions of the planet into desert wastelands. He then documents a disturbing pattern of cultural consequences for society across the world. DeMeo's decades of research help illuminate what is at stake for us in the struggle to heal the land. --author of The Gardens of Their Dreams: Desertification and Culture in World History

I dont understand why people are skeptical about reich and his work on character analysis. This is a pretty straight foward book. Its just an interesting read. Read it. Yodo

Only people without enough knowledge on history and culture will believe this book's ideas. This book collects some cropped information / Stereotypes and twists them, elaborates on them to make a whole idea acceptable by the reader as if it was scientific. It's based on nothing but selective pieces of information but the problem with the way the book arranges them to prove a wrong point of view.

interesting, but very academic and long.

The author uses the theories of Wilhelm Reich as a basis for demonstrating how cultures can transition from their natural state of being almost entirely peaceful and egalitarian to violent and hierarchical. It is shown how this transformation originally occurred at 4000 - 3500 BC because of climatic changes causing desertification and famine in North Africa, the Near East, and Central Asia (collectively Saharasia) and then spreading to the rest of the world. Ample archeological evidence and several cross cultural studies are used to support the theory. Despite the huge scope of this book, I found it engaging until the end because of a fluid writing style, coherent organisation, and plentiful maps, photos, and diagrams. An important piece of work that has particular relevance at a time of mass migration from the Saharasian regions to Western Europe.

James DeMeo, a geographer, author of Saharasia, The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare & Social Violence in the Deserts of the Old World, 463 pages, 2006, has created multiple points of analysis for understanding patterns of human violence, which start with how we treat each other in our families & social affiliations, particularly with female - male relationships linked with social structures such as inheritance, economic decision-making, ownership systems & social decision-making authority-status. Analysis compares what are referred to as Matriarchal (Female & male shared-decision-making) & Patriarchal (Male appropriated decision-making not to denigrate the essential male role) relationships & Societies worldwide. Saharasia is transcendental in terms of taking us past our ever-present social-worldviews which normally don't allow us to self-examine the beliefs, acts & relationships we are involved in. The word Saharasia is a composite between the Sahara desert of north-Africa & the Asian deserts of the middle-east. What isn't discussed in this book is the destruction of 'indigenous' (Latin = 'self-generating') abundant 3-dimensional polyculture orchards through colonial practice of tree-destruction for 2-D 'agriculture' (Latin 'ager' = 'field'). [...] Saharasia is a deep-read packed with excellent descriptions & references to important authors in the fields of: Psychology such as Wilhelm Reich, Sexual-Economy & Anthropology such as Bronislaw Malinowski in the Sexual Life of Savages. DeMeo links observations from our present day society with anthropological research from over 9000 years. As well the knowledge of Saharasia can be used in our personal lives & relationships. If we are to sort out & sustain humanity's role on earth as a keystone species without destroying ourselves & the biosphere, we will need to understand these social patterns. This process of human self-reflection will ultimately be part of every person's 'Vision-Quest' life-long 'education' (L 'to lead forth from within'). In order to get to this place, we all need to re-connect with our own 'indigenous' heritage from wherever our ancestors come from & wherever we are, worldwide.

Among the most read-worthy books out there, for it explains without a doubt how humanity got from a mother dominated culture to being a patriarchal dominated culture. When the starving saharan societies went to europe over their struggle for survival, their men based society counquered europe several thousand years ago. This is why we know, that momen lead societies are more natural than men based societies. This book describes where we come from and where we should go. A must read to argue this topic!

Is mankind inherently violent? How have the destructive aspects of world religions evolved? Did the social trauma brought about by the desertification of the Shara and the Middle East cause a social and cultural upheaval that continues to this day? This book provides convincing and verifiable evidence that a profound social and cultural disturbance originated at this time that explains how and why brutal despotisms centred on religions emerged and remain to this day.

This book isn’t bad, but I can’t see hard evidence for the Saharasia thesis. It’s not enough to blend some world data maps together and flip anthropology upside down. That harsh environments lead to harsh residents is something we know from the broken window theory, so it points the finger in a right direction. But there are some unforgivable clues in this book. The author is denying that AIDS is an infectious disease, what is nonsense and the opposite of 40 years of global science. Plus is he’s suggesting that homosexuality is a sickness, cause it isn’t natural. But the same you can say about skateboarding and no one would say skateboarding is a sickness (except some Californian cops, but that’s another topic). In fact, homosexuality is like skateboarding, we love it, so we do it. I see here strong influence of some new age thinking, where humans are innocent cosmic entities, and brought to evil by desertification of emotions. But we’re animals and violence is part of our nature.