from the resulting divine inspiration. The frontispiece of Maerth's book says that after his travels in Asia, South America and Australia he settled in Italy where he lived with his wife and three children on Lake Como, where he was involved in the restoration of Villa Passalacqua. While future volumes were promised in the course of the text, none ever appeared, with the exception of The Speech of Moltrasio, a very rare 8 page pamphlet. Criticism The book contains no references whatsoever, based alternately on alleged conversations with present-day cannibals, the eating of ape brain by the author and direct insight from deep meditation. Many parts have been deemed by some as being outright racist, particularly the photographic plates comparing various ethnic faces (primarily Arab and African) to apes. He says that blacks have smaller brains than whites and that contemporary cannibal tribes are seeking to remedy this discrepancy by consuming brains in a frantic attempt to catch up, though he estimates that it would take them roughly 100,000 years to do so. Popular culture The book's legacy comes largely from the new wave band Devo, who incorporated several elements of the book into their concept of "de-evolution" and even adopted the book's title for their short film, In the Beginning was the End: The Truth About De-evolution. Bassist/synth player/vocalist Gerald V. Casale said of the book, "It's a better story than the Bible as far as DEVO's concerned." The cover of the 1989 album Now It Can Be Told is based on the cover of the US paperback edition. See also Artificial cranial deformation Devolution (biology) Lamarckism Man into Wolf Monkey brains (cuisine) Polygenism Stanisław Szukalski Trepanation Zermatism Notes References Kossy, Donna (2001). Strange Creations: Aberrant Ideas of Human Origins from Ancient Astronauts to Aquatic Apes. Feral House. ISBN 0922915652 External links The Mystery of the Apple, an Italian comic book illustrating Maerth's theories https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.869.8464&rep=rep1&type=pdf German TV interview with Oscar Kiss Maerth (English subtitles) (c.1971) 1971 non-fiction books Non-fiction books about cannibalism Pseudoscience literature Race-related controversies