> Because in east-west direction the exchange happens inside the same climate zone. This is almost trivially refuted by reading a climate map. Traveling along the Silk Road takes you from a Mediterranean climate into a semi-desert alluvial flood plain, into mountains and high steppes, then back into desert, then low steppes, then mountains, then high desert, then more mountains, and then rich alluvial flood plain of East China, without deviating all that much in latitude. Travel north from West Texas, and you start with high altitude steppe, then continue with high altitude steppe until you…
"Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond. When I read it in the late 90s, I had already read complete accounts of world history and thought myself well-informed on the topic, yet virtually every chapter blew my mind. The book is about the patterns that drive human history, both the written history that we know and the vast period of prehistory which we have a pretty good idea about these days due to genetics and linguistics. A recurring pattern has been people moving around, displacing less fortunate people. Further, Diamond looks for root causes to explain why some tribes or nations would…
It's usually called environmental determinism and is something no modern anthropologist or geographer really wants to be associated with (as much as a modern biologist would want to be associated with eugenics or phrenology). GGS did cause some despair among academics, as century old discredited ideas were presented as science to the public. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-4959.2008.... The popularity of the work Guns, germs and steel (GGS) has served to bring the question of human–environment connections once again to the forefront of popular thought. We assert that the…
My recollection is that Diamond's argument is slightly different. He argues that the east-west orientation of Eurasia meant that societies were more easily able to expand, because you experience relatively little climate variation moving along parallels than you do moving up and down meridians, which you are forced to do when you expand in a north-south oriented continent like America or Africa. Similarly Eurasia had a wider variety of indigenous grains suitable for cultivation, and more large mammals suitable for domestication, and these could be taken with a population when the migrated…
I did read through the responses. The highest upvoted comment on the post "What do you think of Guns, Germs and Steel?" comes from someone that explicitly says that they are not a historian. The bulk of the criticism comes in the form of people alleging environmental determinism and the denial of human agency, which isn't actually a criticism of the book but rather a rejection of book's core claim that geography is a more decisive factor in human development than society and culture. That, and a healthy helping of people alleging western chauvinism, despite Diamond explicitly rejecting the…
And over half a dozen historians at my university spoke highly of the book when I discussed it with them. I'm going to put the opinions of history professors above anonymous posters on the internet. Many mainstream historians are shifting away from the "great man" style of history that puts emphasis on culture and actions of individuals, and towards a more geographic lens of history. The bulk of the criticism I've encountered (besides attempts to equate it with racist environmental determinism akin to Herodotus) are that it gave insufficient attention to advancements in human knowledge and…
Until you remember everyone died from disease... and snakes (actual problem)... and larger tribes that decided "last night the moon was half, so it must mean we need to murder your tribe." People became food raisers because it was a better life. It allowed plentiful food so that others could do things unrelated to food. Art... and science. For one good documentary (or book), check out Guns, Germs and Steel. (it's usually found online and fun to watch!) A book which documents the reasons some civilizations went from tribes, to eventual empires, while others like one in Papa New Guinea…
Sure, but you can recover from a decline, you can’t recover from a collapse. From Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse Here’s the definition: > the loss of cultural identity and of socioeconomic complexity, the downfall of government, and the rise of violence And it isn’t usually a slow process: > Societal collapse is generally quick So for Western civilization or the US to truly collapse it means a complete loss of cultural identity, destruction of the economy, no government and tons of violence. Even war torn countries rarely collapse because even if the…
I spent 20 minutes skimming this for some reason. The conquest of the Incas might be most famous through Guns, Germs and Steel which isn’t mentioned here.[1] But the article seems to put a similar emphasis on the conquistadors being severely outnumbered, glazing their exceptional fortitude and skill etc. That narrative (from Guns, although the article uses The Last Days of the Incas as the source) has been critiqued in Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest[2] which among other things points out how Germs doesn’t mention or properly contextualize the native allies that Pizzaro had. Again I…
You're not looking at any of the criticisms I've seen, then. Here's a brief summary, off the top of my head: * Jared Diamond posits an explanation of megafauna extinction in North America that's heavily predicated on the Clovis-first hypothesis and the overextinction hypothesis. The former hypothesis is very thoroughly discredited, and the latter is also generally disfavored, especially in the it's-the-primary-cause way that Jared Diamond uses it. (Specifically, it should be noted that the megafauna extinction in North America also coincides pretty closely with the Younger Dryas, whose…