من برای جرد دایموند احترام زیادی قائلم، اول به خاطر اینکه به کارش علاقه داره و بسیار زحمت کشیده، سفرهای متعدد، زندگی بین مردم مختلف و قبیله‌های مختلف و خلاصه زیر پتو ننشسته تز بده، دلیل دوم و مهمتر اینکه «* سانسور *» ه

کتاب نسبتاً سنگینه به خاطر اینکه اطلاعات، مثال‌ها و توضیحات زیادی داره. یک خلاصه‌ی بسیار مختصر در پادکست بی‌پلاس از این کتاب آورده شده که برای آشنایی مختصر با کلیات کتاب خوبه. ضمن اینکه یک مستند سه قسمتی مجموعا سه ساعته هم بر مبنای همین کتاب توسط نویسنده ساخته شده که بسیار به فهم کتاب کمک می‌کنه و تقریبا موضوعات کلی و مهم کتاب رو بیان می‌کنه. پیشنهاد من اینه اول اون خلاصه‌ی بی‌پلاس و بعد این سه قسمت مستند رو ببینید و اگر همچنان به شرح و بسط موضوعات و مثال‌های بیشتر علاقه‌مند بودید کتاب رو بخونید. البته بگم تقریباً از صد، صد و پنجاه صفحه‌ی آخر کتابی که من دارم و ویراست جدید هست مطلبی نه در پادکست و نه در مستند نیست که اونها رو دیگه باید از کتاب بخونید.ه

اما در مورد محتویات کتاب
جرد دایموند فیزیولوژیست و پرنده‌شناس در یکی از سفرهاش به گینه‌ی نو با سوالی روبرو میشه. فردی به اسم یالی از اهالی همونجا از جرد می‌پرسه «چرا محموله‌های شما اینقدر زیاده و محموله‌های ما کم؟» محموله در واقع کلمه‌ای هست که اهالی گینه‌ی نو به اجناس و وسایلی میگن که غربی‌ها با خودشون آوردن و قبلاً وجود نداشته. حالا یالی پرسیده چرا شما اینقدر وسیله و اجناسی دارید که ما نداریم ولی ما خیلی چیزی نداریم که شما نداشته باشید؟ در واقع ریشه‌ی سوال یالی به دلایل وجود نابرابری بین انسان‌ها برمی‌گرده. چرا برخی از تمدن‌ها و ملت‌ها سریع‌تر و بیشتر رشد کردند و پیشرفته شدند؟ این سوال جرقه‌ی نوشتن این کتاب رو در ذهن جرد دایموند روشن می‌کنه.ه
در طول کتاب با طرح مسائل و فرضیاتی سعی میشه به این سوال پاسخ دادن بشه. مسئله‌ی اول مطرح شده در مورد گیاهانه. اینکه تمدن‌های پیشرفته‌تر به گیاهان مناسب‌تری دسترسی داشتند. مثلا در خاورمیانه گندم و جو، در چین برنج، در شمال آمریکا ذرت و ... این مناسب بودن به این معناست که هنگام تغییر به زندگی کشاورزی، این گیاهان قابلیت کاشت سریع‌تر و راحت‌تری داشتند و انسان‌ها ناخودآگاه با چیدن ساقه‌های پربازده‌تر و نرم‌تر دست به اهلی کردن اون گیاهان هم زدند. این مدل گیاهان باعث خوراک بیشتر و بهتر برای اون جمعیت از انسان‌ها شد. در حالی که مثلا گیاه قابل رشد در گینه‌ی نو تارو و موز بود که هم در کاشت و برداشت و هم از نظر هرم غذایی وضعیت مناسبی نداره. خب از این مورد جرد نتیجه میگیره که جغرافی مهمترین دلیل این مورد بوده. مورد بعدی حیوانات و اهلی کردن حیوانات بوده. در واقع جوامع برتر مثل گیاه به حیوانات مناسب‌تری هم دسترسی داشتند، حیواناتی که به درد اهلی کردن می‌خوردند. تعداد این نوع حیوانات بسیار کمه در حدود ۱۴ نوع که مثلا ۱۳ نوع از اونها بومی اوراسیا هستند. حیواناتی مثل گاو، بز، گوسفند، شتر و ... حیوانات برای اینکه مناسب پرورش و دامداری باشند باید چه ویژگی‌هایی داشته باشند؟ مثلا گوشت‌خوار نباشند، سریع رشد و تولید مثل کنند، تعداد زاد و ولد زیادی داشته باشند، توانایی زندگی گله‌ای داشته باشند، با انسان سازگار باشند و از این قبیل خصوصیات. خب در این مورد هم جرد به همون نتیجه‌ی قبل رسید، موضوع مهم جغرافیا بود. اما مورد بعدی تولید و شکل دادن به آهنه. این عامل بسیار مهمی هست چون هم باعث تولید ابزار کار بسیار خوب شد و هم اسلحه. اما چرا مثلاً در گینه‌ی نو کسی به شکل دادن آهن نپرداخت؟ چرا همون تمدن‌هایی که گیاه و حیوانات مناسب داشتند به این کار نائل شدند؟ نظر جرد اینه که در این جوامع با افزایش تولید خوراک هم از گیاهان و هم گوشت حیوانات دیگه لازم نبود همه‌ی مردم برای به دست آوردن غذا تلاش کنند، در نتیجه وقت و انرژی کافی برای پرداختن به بقیه‌ی کارها به دست اومد و همین وقت باعث آزمایش و خلاقیت و در نتیجه کشفیات از جمله آهن شد. و نتیجه میگیره که اینجا هم جغرافیا نقش پررنگی داشته.

موضع بعدی که بهش پرداخته اینه که جوامع برتر در سرزمین‌هایی زندگی میکردند که از نظر شکلی افقی بودند مثل آسیا و اروپا برعکس مثلا آفریقا و این باعث شد سرتاسر این سرزمین در یک عرض جغرافیایی باشه و وقتی این افراد مهاجرت میکردند و دام و دانه‌ی گیاهان رو با خودشون می‌بردند توانایی کشت و پرورش اون رو به دلیل مشابهت آب و هوا داشتند در حالی که در سرزمین های عمودی این اتفاق نمی‌افته و آب و هوا به شدت تغییر می‌کنه و اینجا هم جغرافیا مهمترین موضوع مورد نظر جرد هست. مسئله‌ی مهم دیگه که بهش می‌پردازه، بیماری ها هستند. با توجه به اینکه بسیاری از بیماری‌های مهلک انسان از دام و حیوانات منتقل شده، گروهی از انسان‌ها که با دام‌ها بیشتر سروکار داشتند به این موارد مقاوم شدند و وقتی به سمت جوامع دیگه که این خصوصیات رو نداشتند می‌رفتند بسیاری از اونها به خاطر این بیماری‌ها نابود می‌شدند. که خب مشخصا اینجا هم جغرافیا مهمترین نقش رو بازی کرده. یک مثال از حمله‌ی اسپانیا به اینکاها میاره که با تعداد بسیار کمی جمعیت زیادی از اونها رو شکست میدن. از دلایل اون به همین میکروب، اسلحه و همچنین آگاهی و استراتژی اشاره می‌کنه که آگاهی و استراتژی از تجربیات ثبت شده‌ی قبلی اومده که اون نوشتن و خط هم از چیزهاییه که به خاطر روی آوردن به زندگی کشاورزی و داشتن زمان و انرژی بیشتر اختراع شده!
بعد از این به قاره‌ی آفریقا رسیده، قاره‌ای عمودی و متفاوت. اونجا از شکست‌های اولیه‌ی استعمارگران و دلایلش گفته، و بعد به پیروزی‌ها و دلایلش رسیده، که مهمترین دلیل چیه؟ جغرافی!
در آخر کتاب در مورد ژاپن صحبت کرده که این قسمت در ویراست جدید اضافه شده در مورد ریشه و زبان و ... که جالبه. پس از اون یک پسگفتار ویراست ۲۰۰۳ داره که به یک سری از اشکالات جواب داده، جالب بود اما کامل نه. در نهایت حرف این کتاب اینه که مهمترین دلایل برتری بعضی از انسان‌ها بر انسان‌های دیگه و پیشرفت‌ اونها اسلحه، میکروب و فولاد بوده و همه‌ی این‌ها به خاطر جغرافیا و نه نژاد و هر چیز دیگه. شاید اگه مکان این آدم‌ها عوض میشد، سرنوشت اونها هم عوض می‌شد. این حرف آقای جرد دایمونده و من زیاد باهاش موافق نیستم راجع به  اینکه همه چیز در جغرافیا خلاصه شده...ه

261116: popular anthropology/archaeology/geography with the grand narrative thesis going back 11 000 years, the central tenet being that all societies have developed according mostly to their environment, rather than biological characteristics of native population. easy to read, easy argument to follow, useful corrective to the usual great man idea of history, or the racist, ethnocentric, political, interpretation of history. somewhat a modernist theory- just different causal foci (environment rather than economics in marx, for example)- with a lot of collaborating info. but no soundtrack...

"Bir halkın başka bir halk üzerinde nasıl üstünlük kurduğunu açıklamayı başarırsak bu o üstünlüğü haklı göstermek gibi olmaz mı?"

Word for word, this is probably the most knowledge-dense book I’ve read. It is a fire hose of information that soaks readers with facts. It answers this question:

“Why weren’t Native Americans, Africans, and Aboriginal Australians the ones who decimated, subjugated, or exterminated Europeans and Asians?” (p. 15).

The answer given is geographic determinism—specifically, that chance differences across groups in access to domesticable plants and herd animals explain historical patterns of conquest and dominance, as mediated by food production, population growth, technological advancement (scribes, artisans, and inventors require sedentary societies and food support), and increased resistance to animal-derived diseases that would kill up to 99% of previously unexposed populations:

“Far more Native Americans died in bed from Eurasian germs than on the battlefield from European guns and swords” (p. 210).

In other words, the first people to become farmers and herders took over the world. Here is the graph illustrating the theorized process through which human civilization developed and group conquest/subjugation/extermination occurred—a process that put genetically unexceptional people on top of an arbitrary hierarchy of wealth and power:



I was absolutely overwhelmed, and pleasantly so, by the amount of information that Jared Diamond provided. He extensively covered such diverse topics as why almonds but not acorns became staples of the human diet and fixtures in grocery stores (i.e., fast squirrels and multiple-gene causation made it difficult to domesticate oak trees), the importance and history of founder crops (“Agriculture was launched in the Fertile Crescent by the early domestication of eight crops,” p. 141), why cheetahs and zebras confounded human domestication efforts (“The Anna Karenina Principal: domesticable animals are all alike; every undomesticable animal is undomesticable in its own way,” p. 157), why writing evolved with food production and did so in a way that initially restricted it from the masses (“Ancient writing’s main function was ‘to facilitate the enslavement of other human beings,’” p. 235), and the two ways that technology spread across groups/societies (e.g., the Musket Wars). In the form of a representative paragraph, let me give one example of this book’s knowledge-density, of its information-firehose quality:

“When societies do adopt a new technology from the society that invented it, the diffusion may occur in many different contexts. They include peaceful trade (as in the spread of transistors from the United States to Japan in 1954), espionage (the smuggling of silkworms from Southeast Asia to the Mideast in A.D. 552), emigration (the spread of French glass and clothing manufacturing techniques over Europe by the 200,000 Huguenots expelled from France in 1685), and war. A crucial case of the last was the transfer of Chinese papermaking techniques to Islam, made possible when an Arab army defeated a Chinese army at the battle of Talas River in Central Asia in A.D. 751, found some papermakers among the prisoners of war, and brought them to Samarkand to set up paper manufacture” (p. 256).

I can perfectly understand why this book is so successful: Diamond works very methodically, takes his reader everywhere by the hand, constantly clarifies his approach and makes very clear conclusions. And of course there is a lot to be said for his approach to history especially zooming in on environmental issues: geography, climate and biology indeed had an incredible impact on the development of life and certainly also on human history. The evolutionary biologist Diamond is very right to put this into focus. His conclusions make sense, but ... he commits the classic mistake to present his approach as the only possible, logical, rational approach, or maybe the only really relevant approach. That he blatantly dismisses cultural factors is a pity. Okay, in his afterword he spends some brief attention to the importance of cultural factors, but he is getting rid of it by saying that there is little to say about them with certainty. A bit too cheap to my taste, Jared. Nevertheless, this is a very valuable work in the development of World History!
Tip: also read 'Sapiens', by Yuval Hariri, (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) that builds on Diamond, but giving the culture sphere the place it deserves.

Before buying and reading this book, I read some reviews, and frankly, they didn't inspire me. They talked about it being a history of the world, they talked about its immense, ambitious scope. Such talk causes my crap detectors to tingle. I did finally buy it after reading a laudatory review by someone I respect. And I'm glad I did, because I found it to be absolutely top notch. The phrase "history of the world" misguides because the book is entirely about pre-history. The story it tells is historical in nature, but since it is about societies for which we have no written histories, the nature of the evidence is different, and that is one key to its value. The book is a superb assemblage of evidence from different disciplines, mainly genetic analysis, archeology (including non-human fossil evidence), and linguistics, with a smattering of anthropology. This evidence is woven – with original analysis – into a story of early human history.
The result is a story that isn't always pretty but that hangs together well and seems better defended – hence more believable – than I would have thought possible. I suppose this is the origin of those "ambitious scope" comments in the reviews I distrusted. I could not have imagined before reading this book that so much about human pre-history could be inferred.
The writing is strong as well: cogent, well paced, never overbearing. Diamond has a gift not only for writing clearly, but for helping you to understand why you should care. For example, even though his scope includes inference of pre-historical migrations and developments (both cultural and technological) throughout the world, he organizes his presentation in terms of a trenchant theme – why did the European cultures win out over so many others? Why did the Europeans colonize Africa, South America, and so on? Why didn't the Bushmen, or the Australians, or the Incas invade Europe?
And this gift extends to well-chosen personal anecdotes from Diamond's rather unusual life. He personalizes the key question (why the Europeans won) by having it come from the mouth of a Papuan politician who buttonholes Diamond on a beach, asking why the Europeans have so much "cargo" and the New Guineans so little. He illustrates the challenges of Australia by telling stories of his own adventures there as well as those of some Europeans (who died there) in the 19th Century.
By bringing together evidence from a number of disciplines, synthesizing it, and writing about it in an accessible way, Diamond has done something important. It has always been said that the reason to pay attention to history is to learn more about who we are. I believe that this book can be even more powerful in that endeavor because of the vast period (13000 years) and scope (the whole world) it covers, even though the lack of a written record limits the amount of detail. I for one found it stimulating, eye-opening, maybe even life changing.

همیشه برایم سوال بوده مثلا چطور می‌توانیم نژادپرست نباشیم؟ آیا این کار نیاز به آموزش خاصی دارد؟ یعنی اطلاعاتی، داده های علمی ای چیزی به ما داده شود تا دست از نژادپرستی برداریم یا نه کافی ست آدم به احساسات خالصش رجوع کند چرا که احساس آدم زیر بار تبعیض بین انسان ها نمی رود؟

با خواندن این کتاب فهمیدم نه، خود احساس هم تابع دانش و اعتقادی است که در سر داریم. این که بدانی شاید علت این که کهن ترین تمدن ها در آسیا شکل گرفته، وجود گندم و جو برای کشت و گوسفند و بز برای دامداری بوده که در جاهای دیگر امکان آن نبوده و یا علت انتقال این تمدن های بزرگ به اروپا و نه آفریقا و اقیانوسیه و آمریکای سرخپوست ها، شرایط جغرافیایی خاص اروپا بوده نه چیز دیگری، باعث می شود به مرزبندی های فرهنگی و بالا و پایین های دروغی شک کنی و احساساتت نسبت به انسان ها دگرگون شود. بدانی نه تمدن ها ( با ستایش همه ی شگفتی های انسانی و البته مذمت فجایع بزرگشان) و نه زندگی های نخستین به خودی خود اصالت ندارند. این مجموعه ی رنگین فرهنگ انسانی، حاصل تلاش نفسگیر گروه های انسانی برای زندگی روی کره زمین ( چه زندگی معنوی چه زندگی مادی) با توجه به امکانات و شرایط ویژه ی زمان و مکان هرکدام از آن ها و تاثیر متقابل این تلاش ها و شرایط بوده است.

این کتاب در حقیقت تاریخ 6 میلیون سال زندگی خانواده ی انسان بر روی کره ی زمین است (فارغ از ارزش گذاری). خانواده ای که شاید از آفریقا پا گرفتند. به صبوری ِ چند هزار قرن، در جست و جوی زندگی نو در تمامی زمین پخش شدند، در آسیا و آفریقا تمدن تشکیل دادند، بر طبیعت ویژه ی سیبری و اقیانوسیه منطبق شدند، خود را به جزایر دوردست اقیانوس و آمریکا رساندند و در اروپا نظم جدید کره ی زمین را رقم زدند. من بنا بر علاقه ام، هنر را اولویت زندگی ام قرار داده ام ولی به نظرم لازم است کنار صدسال تنهایی مارکز، کتاب هایی از این دست را هم خواند.این کتاب هم داستانی دیگر است. داستان 6 میلیون سال تنهایی انسان روی کره ی زمین

Author Jared Diamond's two-part thesis is: 1) the most important theme in human history is that of civilizations beating the crap out of each other, 2) the reason the beat-ors were Europeans and the beat-ees the Aboriginees, Mayans, et. al. is because of the geographical features of where each civilization happened to develop. Whether societies developed gunpowder, written language, and other technological niceties, argues Diamond, is completely a function of whether they emerged amidst travel-and-trade condusive geography and easily-domesticable plants and animals.

I'm not sure I agree that why the Spanish obliterated the Mayans instead of visa versa is the most interesting question of human history. (How about the evolution of ideas, or the impact of great leaders and inventors?) But it is an interesting question, and worth exploring. Diamond is a philosophical monist, neatly ascribing just about every juncture in human history to a single cause or related group of causes. Given his extensive background in botany and geology, it makes sense that he would look for the impact of those factors in the human story. Unfortunately, those factors are all he regards as important; he relegates to insignificance the contribution of ideas, innovations, and the decision-making of individuals or cultures. His view is fatalistic, seemingly motivated by a P.C.-era desire to pronounce all cultures equal, and their fates the product of random circumstance.

A contradiction here is that fatalistic viewpoints are incompatible with moral pronouncements. (If nobody can control their actions, who's to blame for anything?) Diamond is condemnatory of the Spanish incursion into Mayan lands, but the logical consequence of his theory is that the Mayans would have done the same to the Spanish if they had been first to develop the musket and frigate. Taking Diamond's theory seriously means we'd have to view imperialism as natural and unavoidable, like the predation of animals, and be unable to criticize any culture's actions whatever.

All that said... this is a fascinating and worthwhile read.
There's no doubt that the factors Diamond identified had some role in human progress, however, and if you can put aside the author's predisposition towards his own field and somewhat sketchy philosophical foundation, the book is a compelling and vivid account of what life was like for the earliest civilizations. Diamond describes the evolution of agriculture, written language, and other indispensable facets of human history, giving us a crash tour through the earliest days of human history. The specialized expertise that ultimately derails Diamond's overview at the same time offers a compelling and detailed view of the rise of mankind.

Though there are clearly many factors leading to evolutionary excellence; Jared Mason Diamond laughs loudly as to biology claims based on inheritance, race, and is an astute historian of solving the problem of why. Writing (being an instrument propelling civilizations upward) are attributed to Mesopotamia, Egypt and China. Forces and the necessity of invention are substantive movers of societies and populations. We must keep in mind, “Humanity exists as a function of diversity…I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.” Message is universal and beyond constraints of what many term as religion. "Omne bonum a Deo, omne malum ab homine."

"That higher birth rate of food producers, together with their ability to feed more people per acre, lets’ them achieve much higher population densities than hunter-gatherers."
---Jared Mason Diamond

Isolated/nomadic societies created less progeny (non-conducive movements impacting reproduction). Sketchy homeostasis disabled many societies to the terminal benefit of established Eurasian ones. A study may be conducted into metal tools/correlation of population extermination. Settled and safe societies gave the advantage of storing food---thus sustaining Eurasian populations and imparting biological resistance to diseases. Biological homeostasis then facilitated the development of technology and systems of specialized knowledge in metallurgy, literacy and socio-economic organization. Diffusion is attributed to favorable internal/external connections. Study it well.

Let me start off by comparing this book to another hugely popular title: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. These two books are often lumped together - they both essentially take a long view of human history - but they are different in so many ways. Starting with the writing style: Harari is engaging and easy to read while Diamond is far drier and often belabouring. However, in substance and thoughtfulness, Diamond's nuance and brilliance are far superior to Harari's smug simplicity. Diamond considers every factor and examines his evidence in detail, while Harari makes sweeping assertions and puts his conclusions before his evidence. Both take essentially a materialist view of the world, Diamond's geographic determinism being just that, but Harari takes his reductionism to a monistic extreme, rejecting anything he can't touch or see, while Diamond is willing to consider alternative causal explanations for historical outcomes, and even concedes that his theory doesn't reduce everything to geography alone, but only that geography is the strongest ultimate cause for human differences.

The books starts strong, and the prologue does a good job giving a disclaimer about what what the book is and is not; it is not a justification of colonialism or genocide, only an explanation of why Europeans were the colonizers and Native Americans the colonized. The prologue succeeds in pre-empting many of the challanges that critics bring up. For those of you who have read reviews that are critical of Diamond's alleged "Euro-centrism", I would advise you to read just the prologue and see that Diamond himself repudiates any such accusations. He also anticipates the complaint that his theory is reductionist. He stresses that it is not, as I mentioned above.

The first three parts of the book builds up the basics of this theory - that the differences between advanced and primitive civilizations ultimately trace back to the superior food production capacity of some regions, among other geographic factors, and the ability for advances such as domesticable crops, livestock, writing, political organization, and technology to be shared across distances (and famously, more easily across East-West axes than across North-South). These are important because they supported large concentrations in population, which in turn led to other advances, in what Diamond calls a self-catalyzing process. The second and third parts of the books go into the finer detail of each of these processes, and while at this point the book starts to sound repetitive, these chapters add enough nuance to make it interesting. By the fourth part of the book, however, in which Diamond applies his theory to each of the continents, it does start to get tiresome.

The strongest part of the book, in my opinion, comes at the very end, in the Epilogue and the Afterword (2003 edition). There's a very interesting discussion in the Epilogue that seems to have gotten much attention about why it was Europe rather than China that became the colonial superpower than colonized the Western hemisphere. He talks about how connectedness can be positive or negative. In the case of China, the extreme connectedness was at first a positive because it allowed crops and technology to be shared across the country, but it was also a negative when a single centralized authority had absolute authoritarian power to shut down the Chinese maritime project. Europe, on the other hand, because of its moderate connectedness, enjoyed the benefits of the sharing of ideas, yet its fragmented geography ultimately allowed Columbus to shop around his idea of sailing West to the various fragmented political regimes. This same idea is found in Matt Ridley's book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, and in Joel Mokyr's A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy.

The Epilogue also has a short discussion about cultural causes and the great-man theory. The latter he dismisses but the former he entertains. His discussion is well nuanced though, and worth contemplating. Finally, the end of the Epilogue talks about history as a science and is one of the best discussions I've seen on the topic. He explains why the scientific methods familiar to physicists could or could not work for historical sciences as well. Edward O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge has some good ideas on this topic too which don't make their way into Diamond's treatment, but he comes close. In fact, the author I would characterize as most similar to Diamond would be Edward O. Wilson. His books The Social Conquest of Earth and Consilience complement this book very well. This segment is perhaps one of the most important parts of this book, and I would recommend everyone read it even if they don't read the rest of the book. It's important enough that it deserves its own book or a long essay at the very least.

Overall, this book deserves its status as an ultimate classic, and there is enough nuance and detail that a short summary won't do. If you think you already understand the main ideas of this book from a review or YouTube video you watched on it, I would challenge that you don't. The style does get a bit repetitive and dry, but if you pay enough attention to the details, it should keep you enthralled.

Title: I see the emperor's new clothes

I came late to the party on this one. I had high hopes. Alas, they are dashed. This book was such a disappointment., on so many levels. I'm glad I'm not alone in this. The other 1-star reviews on Amazon are a treasure trove of reasons *not* to read Guns, Germs, and Steel and also other, better books to read. Four I recommend heartily on similar topics:

Staring into Chaos: Explorations in the Decline of Western Civilization
The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization
A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History
Hive Mind: How Your Nation's IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own

Now for my thoughts on Guns, Germs, and Steel. And, admittedly, I stopped reading at about page 100. I could hardly make it through the Prologue. There Diamond provides the germ (no pun intended) of this book, which has its origins in a simple question posed to the author decades ago by an acquaintance as they were walking on a beach in New Guinea: "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo [material wealth] and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?"

Diamond immediately dismisses IQ (p. 19), a field of research more than a hundred years old used by governments, businesses, schools, and militaries to great effect (see Hive Mind: How Your Nation’s IQ Matters So Much More Than Your Own, Jones, 2016). In one paragraph Diamond dismisses this entire (and proven) body of research and then spends two pages arguing for native New Guineans genetic superiority over European/American peoples. This is classic denial on Diamond's part. Ignore the science that you don't like; embrace what you do like.

"From the very beginning of my work with New Guineans, they impressed me as being on the average more intelligent, more alert, more expressive, and more interested in things and people around them than the average European or American is" (p. 20). Wow! What a statement! Diamond is using himself as an "N of 1," ignoring thousands of years of history! He continues down his lonesome, illogical path: "It's easy to recognize two reasons why my impression that New Guineans are smarter than Westerners may be correct." This is laughable, but he's serious. So from this nothingness springs Diamond's claim: "...in mental ability New Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners" (p. 21). My jaw was on the floor. Absolutely astounding. Here is Diamond's "scientific process" in a nutshell: 1. I'm impressed by X. 2. I'll explain X by what I myself believe. 3. What I just claimed about X must be scientifically true.

It's perfectly acceptable to claim that New Guineans are "genetically superior to Westerners," but don't you dare claim the reverse. Because that would be racist, right?

It's easy to hate white people, and trendy and popular, and Jared Diamond shows us how.

But let's see what other researchers have to say about their experiences in New Guinea.

o "And we've had one corpse float by, a newborn infant; they are always throwing away infants here, as the fathers object to observing the taboos associated with their survival" (Letters From the Field, 1925 - 1975, Margaret Mead, 1977)

o "...infanticide, especially female infanticide, was quite common throughout New Guinea. The Bena Bena, for example, often killed a newborn daughter if the mother already had a small child to care for, and they also typically killed one of a pair of twins." (Child Abuse and Neglect: Cross-cultural Perspectives, edited by Jill E. Korbin, 1982, p. 14)

o "In New Guinea one can find infanticide, initiation rites, child mutilations, sale of infants for both marriage and sacrifice, and forced homosexuality, to name only the more dramatic examples" (ibid, p. 13)

o When tribal mothers were asked why they killed their infants, they stated it was because they were “demon children,” because “children are too much trouble,” because “it was a girl and must be killed,” or “because her husband would go to another woman” for sex if she had to nurse the infant. Children watched their mothers bury their siblings live, eat them, or toss them to sows to devour—or else they would force the grown-up children to help them kill their siblings or even sometimes make them kill live infants purchased for murdering from other tribes. Mothers who ate their children are described as “overcome by frightful hunger for baby meat”—again, not because of lack of food, but because of an inner need to re-incorporate infants after losing them at birth. (The Origins of War in Child Abuse, Lloyd DeMause, Chapter 7)

o "Females in New Guinea are treated brutally. Since they are routinely viewed as secretly being witches “who can kill simply by staring at a person” (Killer Mother alters), they are often killed simply because they are imagined to have poisoned people. Mothers in New Guinea are horribly abused as girls, being routinely raped by fathers, brothers, visitors, peers, gangs. When they become wives they are treated brutally by men and have suicide rates as high as 25 percent." (ibid)

And one more from DeMause's book:

o "New Guinea mothers constantly “rub the penes of their infant sons [and] the little boys…have erections” while they sleep naked together at night. One boy described to Poole how whenever his mother was depressed or angry she often “pulled, pinched, rubbed, or flicked a fingernail against his penis” until he cried, afraid it might break off. “It hurts inside,” he said. “It bleeds in there and hurts when I pee…Mother not like my penis, wants to cut it off.” Males also masturbated and sucked children’s genitals, both sexes, using the child as a maternal breast as all pedophiles do. Mothers also masturbate and kiss the vagina of baby girls. Malinowski reports watching the widespread sucking of genitals and intercourse between children in Melanesia, encouraged by parents, so that most girls are raped by the time they are seven years old.40 New Guinea fathers rarely care for their little children, but when they do they mainly fondle their genitals, using the child as a breast-object “because they say they get sexually aroused when they watch them nurse.”

*This* is the culture and society Diamond states that he *prefers* over Western/American culture/society. What a sick man. That, or he's a liar, or, worse, a charlatan. In any case, Diamond is fooling thousands with his book.

Diamond writes: "Many of the white colonialists openly despised New Guineans as 'primitive.'" Well, that may have something to do with what those Europeans witnessed: child sacrifice, child rape, forced homosexuality, sales of infants, mutilations, cannibalism, etc etc.

What really got me was how Diamond -- a so-called expert in his field -- is *completely* unaware of this previously published research on the absolutely horrific child abuse in New Guinea. But I know about it. No wonder the academic world is in the state it's in. It's a joke, and a bad one at that.

Diamond sums up his book in one sentence: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves" (p. 25).

"Mobile bands of hunter-gatherers are relatively egalitarian..." (p. 29).Wrong. Hobbes was right. Warfare is in mankind's blood. (see Science shows Thomas Hobbes was right – which is why the Right-wing rule the Earth, The Telegraph, September 29, 2016). Also see quotes on New Guinea populations in above cited works.

So even before we're out of this book's Prologue we get a sense of Diamond's biases, scientific research ignorance, and desire to hoodwink his readers. That's a real shame, because he put a lot of effort into this work. But when a reader has to question everything he reads, it's not enjoyable.

This work is an excellent illustration of a man with a conclusion in search of a hypotheses. In other words, Diamond does the opposite of what he claims. He's not letting the evidence lead him where it might; he starts with his conclusion in mind and builds a case to support it. He's working backwards. He's not a scientist at all.

So, to answer Yali's Question: Your society might get ahead if you stop eating and sacrificing your infants, raping your daughters, sexually abusing your sons, selling your infants into slavery and forcing them into homosexual activities, and abusing your women. That'd be a start.

Reading the book

I trudged on.

Diamond uses coy phrasing throughout--Great Leap Forward (no, not the Chinese one where multiple millions of people starved or were executed), uses terms like "colonization" both negatively and positively, as it suits him; and favors Australia/New Guinea in his discourse.

In Chapter 2 in his extraordinarily detailed description of the human colonization of the Polynesian islands, including Hawaii, he fails to mention ritualistic human sacrifice (and cannibalism) as usually practiced for canoe launches, war parties, etc. Diamond mentions gladly the temples on Hawaii but fails to mention human sacrifices practiced there. I wonder why. (Search "Polynesian human sacrifice" and "Polynesian cannibal feasts" for details.)

Chapter 3 reads like some high schooler's breathless explanation of European conquests in the Americas. Surprise! Greater societies conquer lesser societies!

Chapter 4. Wow. Chapter 4 is titled Farmer Power, but halfway through Diamond gets sidetracked with horses (and then germs) and their influence on war. Here's a gem: "The most direct contribution of plant and animal domestication to wars of conquest was from Eurasia's horses, whose military role made them the jeeps and Sherman tanks of ancient warfare on that continent" (p. 86). Wut? I literally laughed out loud. This book won a Pulitzer Prize?

A few pages later:

"The peoples of areas with a head start on food production thereby gained a head start on the path leading toward guns, germs, and steel. The result was a long series of collisions between the haves and the have-nots of history" (p. 99). Was that written by a 10th grader in her Social Sciences class?

I can't take it anymore.

It's difficult for me to understand how a book like this can be so popular, even winning the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction and then also the Aventis Prize for Best Science Book. It's simply discouraging to read (part of) such a poorly written book and know that it's been so successful. But then I sift through hundreds of news feeds and Twitter, and the only thing I can think is that it's trendy to hate white people nowadays, particularly white men, and blame them for every ill in the world.

Remember, when Native Americans were putting up mud walls in half caves in Arizona, when New Guineans were killing their children and raping them, and when Native Hawaiians were sacrificing humans, Europeans were building the cathedral at Notre Dame (all events circa 1100 AD).

Does culture matter? You bet. And it's important to study the differences among cultures and societies to explain those differences. But this isn't the book to do that.

Did not like it
1/5 Goodreads
1/5 Amazon

In 1532, Francisco Pizarro and a band of 168 Spaniards punctured the heart of the Inca Empire and proceeded to capture its emperor, decimate its citizens, and plunder its gold. Why didn’t it happen the other way around? Why didn't the Incas sail to Europe, capture Charles V, kill his subjects, and loot his castles and cathedrals? Jared Diamond attempts to answer this question in Guns, Germs & Steel.

Why have Europeans tended to dominate other peoples on other continents? Does it have something to do with race? Were Europeans cleverer than other races? Diamond says no. It wasn't racial characteristics that tipped the scales of fortune for the Europeans; it was their geography. Their geography gave them access to the best domestic grains and animals, which led to specialization and advanced technologies like steel and guns. Their domestic animals also helped them develop potent germs, and the antibodies for those germs.

The importance Diamond lays at the hoofs and paws of domesticated animals is, in fact, one of the fascinating themes of the book. According to Diamond, our animals have played an uncanny role in our cultural and economic development, both in a negative sense (human contact with farm animals facilitated the germ-exchange that produced man’s deadliest diseases) and in a positive sense (men from the Russian steppes, riding their newly domesticated horses, spread the Indo-European language both westward into Europe and southeastward into Persia and India). Diamond's point is that people living in areas with more domesticable animals (sheep, cattle, pigs, horses, etc.) gained an important advantage over people without them.

For example, Native Americans had only three domesticated animals before 1492: llamas, turkeys, and dogs. Why only three? Weren’t there wild horses and cattle in America too? Actually, fossil records show huge populations of horses, oxen, and millions of other large mammals in the Americas until about 11,000 BC. What happened around 11,000 BC? You guessed it: man showed up via the Bering Strait. The American horses, oxen and other large mammals, having never experienced a human predator, approached the new arrivals like slobbering puppy dogs, and were consequently turned into steaks. In fact, it was steaks every night for a couple thousand years for the new immigrants, until most of the continents’ large mammals— and all but one suitable candidate for domestication— were wiped out.

Now this is fascinating enough, but then consider that because the Native Americans didn't have any horses, oxen, pigs, etc. left to exploit as beasts of burden and domesticated food sources, they also lost the civilizational benefits those animals would have brought (and did bring to Eurasians), not the least of which is germs. Yes, germs. Because the Native Americans didn't live in close proximity to a plethora of "farm animals" like their counterparts in Eurasia, they lacked the "petri dish" wherein deadly germs could grow and proliferate. They thus failed to develop the infectious diseases and (more importantly) the antibodies to those diseases that might have protected them from the germs of invading Europeans when Señor Columbus and his crew showed up.

It was for this reason that when the Conquistadores did finally show up, they were able to wipe out 80% of the indigenous population before ever unsheathing their swords— with germs— with small pox and influenza, both diseases generated by the passing back and forth of germs between domesticated animals and their human caretakers (small pox between cattle and humans, and influenza between pigs and ducks and humans). If that doesn't blow your mind, your mind is blowproof.

Then again, you may well ask: “What about moose and bison? Why didn’t Cortés and his boys float up to the Mexican shoreline and find a bloodthirsty cavalry of Aztecs on mooseback, energized by the milk and meat of their plentiful herds of bison?” Diamond surmises that by the time most the large mammals in America had been digested into extinction by their hungry human friends, there was only one suitable candidate left for domestication: the llama/alpaca. Every other large mammal that remained (including moose and bison) lacked the qualities that allow for domestication.

In all of human history only 14 large mammals have ever been domesticated: sheep, goat, cattle, pigs, horses, camels (Arabian and Bactrian), llamas, donkeys, reindeer, water buffalo, yaks, and two minor relatives of cattle in southeast Asia called Bali cattle and mithrans. Outside of these, no other large mammals have been transformed from wild animals into something useful to humans. Why? Why were Eurasia's horses domesticated and not Africa's zebras? Why were Eurasia's wild boar domesticated and not America's peccaries or Africa's wild pigs? Why were Eurasia's five species of wild cattle (aurochs, water buffalo, yaks, bantengs, and gaurs) domesticated and not Africa's water buffalo or America's bison? Why the Asian mouflon sheep (the ancestor of our sheep) and not the American bighorn sheep?

The answer is simple: we tried and it didn't work. Since 2500 BC not one new large mammal (out of the 148 worldwide candidates) has been domesticated, and not for lack of trying. In fact, in the last 200 years, at least six large mammals have been subject to well-organized domestication projects: the eland, elk, moose, musk ox, zebra, and American bison. All six failed. Why? Because of one or more of the following problems: diet, slow growth rate, nasty disposition, tendency to panic, captive breeding problems, and/or social structure.

Diet: Why don't we eat lion burgers? Because raising lions, or any other carnivore, is uneconomical. You need 10,000 lbs of feed to grow a 1,000 lb cow. You would likewise need 10,000 lbs of cow to grow 1,000 pounds of lion. That means you’d need 100,000 lbs of feed to produce 1,000 pounds of lion. Hence the lack of lion burgers on the Wendy’s drive-thru menu.

Growth rate: Why don't we eat rhino burgers? Simple, it takes 15-20 years for a rhino to reach adult size while it only takes cows a couple.

Nasty disposition: Here's where we eliminate zebra burgers, hippo burgers, grizzly burgers and bison burgers. These animals retain their nasty and dangerous tempers even after several generations of captive breeding. Did you know zebras injure more zookeepers per year than do lions and tigers?

Tendency to panic: No deer or gazelle burgers either. Why? Because they take flight at the first sign of danger and will literally kill themselves running into a fence over and over to escape the threat.

Captive breeding problems: Many animals have elaborate breeding rituals that can't happen in captivity.

Social structure: This may be the most important requirement for domesticates. The best candidates for domestication live in herds, maintain a clear herd hierarchy, and overlap ranges with other herds rather than having exclusive ranges. Here humans just take over the top of the hierarchy. They literally become the herd leader (think “Dog Whisperer”).

So the reason European explorers didn't find Native American ranchers with herds of bison and bighorn sheep is because these animals can’t be domesticated. Diamond contends that if there had been any horses left in the Americas, or any of the other 13 candidates for domestication, the Native Americans surely would have domesticated them, and reaped all the attendant benefits. But alas, their great-great-grandpas had already killed, grilled and digested them all.

Diamond's book is a great read. If you're a student of history, it’s a must read. The way I see it, the story of man (and the story of all things, for that matter) is the story of varied states of disequilibrium moving violently and inexorably toward equilibrium. What was Pizarro's vanquishing of Atahualpa's empire if not an example of such violent re-balancing? The beauty of Diamond's book is that it seems to pinpoint, with surprising simplicity, the original source of disequilibrium among men: geography. Roughly put, some got born in the right place and some didn’t. Skin color had nothing to do with it. Race has always been nothing more than an arbitrary mark to show the geographical birthplace of one's ancestors'.

By the way, if you do read this book, take note of the way we humans first discovered agriculture. According to Diamond, it happened at the latrine. We'd go out gathering seeds, eating some along the way, and then come back to camp and defecate, all in the same spot. Guess what started growing in that spot? Yes, my friends, as crude as it may sound, we humans shat are way to civilization. Thank your ass when you get a chance.