English anthropologist and film-maker Hugh Brody was educated at Trinity College, Oxford, and taught social anthropology at Queen's University, Belfast. He is an honorary associate of the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge. During the 1970s, he worked with the Canadian Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, and then with Inuit and Indian organisations, mapping hunter- gatherer territories, researching land claims and indigenous rights in Canada, and learning Inuktituk, the language of the Inuit. Since 1997, he has worked with the South African San Institute on bushman history and land rights in Southern Kalahari. This extract is taken from his newly published book, The Other Side of Eden: Hunter- Gatherers, Farmers and the Shaping of the World (Faber, £20 in UK). His previous books include Indians on Skid Row, Inishkillane: Change and Decline in the West of Ireland and Maps and Dreams. His films include People of the Islands, Nineteen Nineteen (made with Michael Ignatieff) and On Indian Land.