Been meaning to read this book... just too darn lazy!

Thank you very very much for scientific / historic sift!

"Been meaning to read this book... just too darn lazy! "

While worth reading it's quite overrated. It is primarily an attempt to provide a politically correct explanation for why Europeans have dominated the globe. While he has a convincing argument based upon geographical determinism, he completely ignores the role culture has in human affairs. Given that he isn't a historian, I suspect he simply wasn't aware that different cultures have arisen in the exact same geographical environment at different times, yet have had radically different fates. A key example is Mycenean Greek culture (short lived, long dead, with no influence on modern life) and Classical Greek culture (persisted over a millenia after having dominated the known world and continues to directly influence the modern world). Both cultures existed in the exact same environment and yet the had such different fates. Diamond has no explanation for such occurrences.

Going back to the issue of political correctness, Diamond goes to great lengths in his introduction to explain how he wanted to get away from racist explanations of why some civilizations have dominated others. He talks about how he doesn't buy that one civilization, particularly Western European Civilization, can be smarter, stronger, etc. than another civilization. About ten pages later however he apparently forgets all of this and goes on at great length about how much more intelligent indigenous New Guinean islanders are than your average Westerner. Apparently racist explanations are perfectly acceptable so long as its not Western Europeans being considered superior.

Excellent Sift! Guns, Germs and Steel is by far one of the best books I have read recently, as is his recent novel- Collapse. Really, I highly recommend the both of them!

And by the way scottishmartialarts, you have no idea what you are talking about, did you even read this book? Or just skim through it while sitting in a coffee shop trying to look intelligent? First off, the part about the New Guinean islanders you have totally taken out of context, Diamond was pointing out that viewing one culture as 'primitive' is essentially a problem of perspective... He looked at average New Guineans, with their survival skills and knowledge of their own natural environment, the complexity of their everyday lives, and then compared all these practical skills and this wealth of knowlege to the skill set and knowledge base of the average Westerner, who, by virtue of his own everyday life, would in comparison to the New Guinean's mad jungle skills, seem quite an idiot.

As for what you are trying to verbalize regarding the Greeks and the Mycenaeans, it would seem that not only are you also not a historian either, so I'm not at this point going to bother going into it with you...

In any case, people, ignore the above, read these books! Especially Collapse it contains a lot of important information about sustainability and societal development in ancient civilizations that are, frighteningly, applicable to today.

I think scottishmartialarts does have a point. Politics and just sheer chance of luck in history plays a big part of outcomes of civilization.

USA could've bombed China with atomic blast during Korean war, but Truman thought Macarthur was bit nuts for thinking that. Now they're on the biggest economic rebound modern history has ever seen, armed with the latest western technology.

Same thing with Rome vs Egypt back in the days of Octavian vs Marcus Antonius. Rome produced less food than Egypt at that time, heavily relying on Sicily to feed the gigantic city of Rome. Rome and Alexandria were at the same level both technologically and population wise. But Octavian wins, and Latins dominate the Mediterranean sea.

Perhaps ultimately because they had a better and more effective military tradition (culture factor) than Alexandrians of Egypt or even the Carthaginians long ago, who also produced more food than Romans, enough so that they were able to make rich and buy mercenaries from other areas to fight their battles for them.

But what Diamond speaks of is about the beginning of civilization and why we have ended up with such drastically different lifestyles. I do think he has a point there.

And I especially agree with this three points:

1. A community requires easy means to produce high energy yielding food to sustain large population.

2. High population & density is always a must to achieve technological innovation and germ immunity.

3. Society with high germ immunity and technological advancement gets to dominate other cultures.

BUT

All 1st, 2nd and 3rd points can be overcome with: constant Trading and Politics between communities.

Also, National Geographic Channel has just revealed from their programming: the first gunshot in Americas, that Spanish vs Native American battles weren't always what Spanish chronicles claimed.

They were ALWAYS accompanied by Inca's former enemy states. And the siege of Lima (Puruchuco) in particular reveals that most of the fighting was done between Native Americans and the battle won by Native Americans, not by some sheer overwhelming power of horses and muskets.

So politics plays a very critical role in human history than just purely on physical geographic location, critical though it may be.

I'm also bit miffed at what Diamond said when he gave ancient Greeks as evidence of 'cultivation civilization'.

From what I know, Greek cities (Peloponnese) did have large population with heavy population density, but they weren't too big on farming, mainly because the Greek land is not the most ideal place for farming because it's full of jagged rocks and salty coastlines. They had a big animal herding tradition with goats and sheeps, and probably had a big fishing tradition going on, but not to the extent to feed big cities. Plus, that's not really a diverse diet.

There survived mainly as active traders, who got lot of their material needs from other parts of the world by setting up colonies and establishing trade relations (Mycenae, Asia Minor, Egypt, and Dorians later on). They especially had a very close relation with Egyptians, perhaps because they were the largest providers of wheat at the time. They give them fish and sheep skin, Egyptians give them surplus of wheat.

Anyways overall, Diamond comes up with definitely interesting fresh theories, but also comments on some things that are directly against historic evidence. Like how conquistador's guns and swords were such a large factor, enough to compensate their lack of numbers (which he later corrects as germs), how Greeks flourished because of cultivation or that Sumerian writings had influenced Chinese characters... etc etc.

Like, Huh?

And I also couldn't find anything about smallpox and black plague originating from farm animals. As far as evidence goes, some say bubonic plague started from Ethiopia, where Diamond claim domestication of animals didn't take place... that 13 of 14 farm animals all originated from Middle East, which is another point of doubt (he also contradicts himself from 1st part to 3rd part.. what's going on here).

Oh! and why Europeans happened to be the ones to keep colonizing the world, when Ming and Qing China had plenty of capability to do the same, but never did so?

Oh! and how was conquistadors survive in the tropics? or early American pioneers who were dying by hundreds?

This is why this guy is a biologist, and not a Historian. Stay in your own profession old man!

Stick with the original theory of geographic effect in human history. Discard the rest.

To be sure, Diamond's book functions better as a macro explanation of civilizations over the past 10,000 years, rather than a theory of why one specific culture loses to another. This is more or less his stated goal in the introduction--not to ignore culture, which obviously plays a huge role, but to recognize environment, especially as having an important long-term effect. Diamond's point is that Eurasia shares certain geographical/environmental conditions and resources not present in other parts of the globe and that this gave Eurasia a big head start. You can argue against this on specifics (probably endlessly), but, generally, the theory seems to hold water. In this context, I don't think a comparison of Mycenaean VS Classical Greek cultures is relevant. A more appropriate comparison that Diamond might make would be Mayan VS Greek or some such.

I do agree, however, his comment "in mental ability New Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners" (p21) does detract from the overall scientific quality of the book. But then again, he makes it clear he is basing this one his subjective observations, and as Raven says, he was probably just trying to drive home the point that 'primitive' is relative.

"First off, the part about the New Guinean islanders you have totally taken out of context"

I concede that I took it out of context but Diamond nevertheless wants to have his cake and eat it too. He condemns racist explanations of human history as being loathsome and wrong (19). He is clearly making a moral judgment about racism here: that it is loathsome. If I said Black Americans have evolved to be on average less intelligent and less well motivated than their white counterpart, I have clearly made a racist statement. I have drawn distinctions between groups that should only, if I want to avoid racist thinking, be made between the characters of individuals; hence, in the previous sentence I have made a racist statement. 2 pages after his moral judgment on racism, Diamond explains the environmental forces that acted upon the New Guinean population that caused them to evolve a higher degree of intelligence than their New Guinean counterparts. He even goes so far as to conclude that "in mental ability New Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners" (21). While he qualifies that statement as only being probable, rather than true, he has nevertheless made a racially charged, if not outright racist, statement. He made a moral judgment, yet two pages later me makes the sort of statement he had just condemned.

As for the context of his statements, he is trying to disprove a specific racist argument seeking to explain history. That argument uses Australia as its prime example: that European colonists were able to build a complex, urban society within 100 years where as the Aborigines had lived there for over 40,000 years without having progressed beyond a hunter-gather society. The explanation continues by saying that clearly, given the identical environment, the Europeans most have been more intelligent than the Aborigines (19). Diamond seeks to disprove that explanation by stating that "sound evidence for the existence of human differences in intelligence that parallel human differences in technology is lacking" (19). He then goes on to give his example of superior New Guinean intelligence to show that a people with stone-age technology can be more intelligent than a people with modern technology. Therefore, the inverse of the assumption upon which the Australia example rested (technologically advanced people are more intelligent than less advanced people) is in fact true.

Now my problem here isn't that Diamond is wrong, I suspect that he is in fact right that New Guineans are on average smarter than Westerners. Rather, the issue I take with him is his alternate repudiation and acceptance of racism; he can't have it both ways if he wants to be intellectually consistent and honest. It is politically correct to say that a brown man is smarter than a white man, but it is not PC to do the reverse; Diamonds repudiation and acceptance of racism lines up with this sort of political correctness.

Now political correctness in and of itself has no bearing upon a book's argument, other than the inconsistency between two introductory pages . The reason why I brought up political correctness in Diamonds introduction is because it reveals a sensitivity to political correctness that caused him to steer clear of politically charged aspects of human history, namely culture. The politically correct dogma with regards to culture is relativism. It is not PC to claim that one culture is superior to another. Were Diamond to seek to explain history by looking at how the practices of one culture could superior than another, allowing the former to conquer the latter, then he would violate his own politically correct sensibility. He therefore does not talk about culture, which to my mind is the glaring weakness of his book.

He instead chooses to explain how geography determines how quickly a people could adopt agriculture, domesticated animals and writing; the three tools that allow for rapid technological advancement and eventual conquest. People that settled in geography that predisposed them to more rapid acquisition of those three tools were more likely to conquer their neighbors. The fates of human societies were therefore determined by accidents of geographic settlement. Aborigines aren't less sophisticated than Europeans, they just unknowingly settled in a region whose geography would put them irreparably behind in the technology race that determines who is the conqueror and who is the conquered. Diamond does a great job of explaining the geographical role in the acquisition of those three tools, and towards that end he has a great book.

The problem is that he ignores how different cultures will make use of those three tools, and the technologies they produce, in different ways. What he needs to do to complete his account is to also investigate cultural factors, but to do so he risks violating PC dogma and hence he shied away from that.

In response to Yoghurt:

I agree with most everything you've said. For whatever reason I'm having a difficult time articulating a complete response so I think instead I'll just make a couple of quick points.

1. In terms of looking at continents and their respective histories, Diamonds theory is dead on. Agriculture arose in the different continents at different times in history due primarily to the geography of the continents. In this respect Diamond is absolutely convincing.

2. At a level smaller than continental level, his theory is of very little use. Why did the Greeks and later the Romans conquer the Mediterranean? Asia Minor, the Levant, Mesopotamia and Egypt, all had agriculture and writing long before either Greece or Rome. The answer lies in culture.

3. I am probably being a bit too presumptuous in reading a politically correct rewrite of history into Diamond. Nonetheless that was my reaction when reading him and my most recent post seeks to explain that reaction.

4. I briefly brought up Mycenean Greece and Classical Greece primarily to illustrate point number 2. Culture can be the edge that allows one of two otherwise equal societies to dominate the other. Culture can also allow a technologically inferior society to overcome a technologically superior culture.

At the macro-scale of Diamonds theory this discussion may be less than relevant. However in order for Diamonds theory itself to be truly relevant it needs to have an explanation at the micro-level as well, which it doesn't because it omits discussion of the role of culture. Given that he states that his book has real world political applicability (16), it is not out of line to criticize him for failing address the micro-level of interactions between societies. In that respect I think he fails for all of the above reasons..

*science

Adding video to channels (Science) - requested by rembar.

*documentaries

Adding video to channels (Documentaries) - requested by mauz15.

Thanks for this great sift! Only now did I find it and cant wait to see the other two episodes.

*dead

This video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by eric3579.

Awarding eric3579 with one Power Point for fixing this video's dead embed code.

*findthumb *length=54:35

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - findthumb requested by eric3579.


The duration of this video has been updated from unknown to 54:35 - length declared by eric3579.