Chapter 9 Summary

Next day, Ishmael moves out from behind the glass, making both briefly uncomfortable. Ishmael displays a timeline from before 3 million B.C. to beyond 2,000 A.D. labeled "Leavers," and at the 8,000 B.C. point draws an offshoot, labeled "Takers." The point is not a remote event like the Trojan War, but a process begun in the Neolithic Near East that is still ongoing in New Zealand, Africa, and South America. The agricultural revolution is the foundation of the vast Taker civilization today exactly as in their first farming village. The divine intention for mankind is the revolutionary manifesto that says why the revolution was necessary and why it must go forward at any cost. The narrator is impressed by this thought.

Ironically, Ishmael continues, a large segment of Takers adopt as their own a centuries-old Leaver story of the Takers' origins. When the...