Overview A single structure and a single process underlie the last six thousand years traced in this series. The structure is civilization. The process is the eradication of relational being (RBE) wherever it exists and whenever it reemerges. This simplicity, however, is quickly obscured. As social, political, and ideological formations multiply, their growing complexity conceals the underlying mechanism. Nearly everything else about life since our species moved – our institutions, beliefs, conflicts, and self-descriptions – belongs to the level of secondary detail. The evidence strongly suggests that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were well integrated with their world through animism and presence...