The High Plains of Eden Summary and Analysis

Archaeological evidence for such ideas exist. One area in southern Algeria, Tassili-n-Ajjer Plateau has rock paintings depicting shamans covered in mushrooms dancing with fistfuls of mushrooms. Another painting shows the shamans running alongside geometric figures depicting their hallucinations. Similar images are found in Peruvian textiles.

The Round Head Period, named for the style of human depictions, is estimated to have lasted several thousand years around the ninth millennium. The Great Goddess was profound in these images and an Egyptian influence was prominent as well, indicating that the central Sahara might be the source of pre-Dynastic Egypt.

This partnership paradise did not last forever. The transformation of the hunter-gather culture to one of animal and plant domestication gave way to Western civilization. McKenna suggests that in the Book of Genesis, the fruit of the...