واقعا به معنای واقعی کلمه، پدرم دراومد تا بتونم این کتاب رو تمام کنم! حقیقتا تا این حد سخت خوان و با ترجمه‌ی غیرروان بود

کتاب خیلی در جهان تقدیر شده ولی واقعا من نتونستم ازش لذت ببرم و به نظرم چیزی فراتر از داده‌های ما هم ارائه نمی‌کرد. یه جورایی علمی شده‌ی همان انسان خردمند بود

This is an ambitious book. It seeks to provide a simple rationale to explain why inequalities exist between the peoples of the world. What makes its approach fresh is that the analysis is from someone who is neither an economist nor a historian. Broadly speaking, Diamond pulls this off. His style is readable and his arguments well laid out. His conclusions about the importance in early human history of having the right plants and animals to promote the vital first step for a civilisation – that of developing farming, is compelling. I was also particularly impressed by his view that the orientation of a continent can foster or hinder the spread of farming, a point I had never considered.
The book’s strength is also it weakness. Jared Diamond is very good on his own ground, and so long as his narrative is based on his knowledge of anthropology, biology and geography, all is well. Once the book approaches our own times, however, his arguments become stretched. When more complicated historical, social and economic factors need explanation, his narrative becomes less convincing. That said, this is still an excellent, thought-provoking read.

I felt cheated by this book. It started off with such promise and like a fat person with a box of chocolates in front of them, I couldn't wait to get wired in. At one point, I decided that this book was worthy of four stars. By the midway point though I was tired. Tired of the repetition. How many times does Jared Diamond have to refer to the fact that he believes the rise of food production to be the main determinant of success for a society, before he believes the reader might believe him. It just seemed like in this book, it was (at least) one time too many.

Diamond attempts to answer an age old question; what determines a society's position in relation to the others on Earth? The problem with the approach he uses is that it is just not robust enough to be worth sharing. My first problem is that just because things are the way they are, it doesn't mean they had to be. Unless otherwise convinced (and I would take some convincing) I just can't lend any weight to the idea that history is anything other than chaotic, influenced by countless factors, many of which we remain unaware. I just could not shirk off the impression that Diamond was coming up with a theory and then shoehorning facts into the theory to lend it credence. One example of this is the idea that societies rate of progress is determined largely by what way round the landmass they inhabit lies. He fails to mention The Alps, The Mediterranean, the Himalayas or the large temperature gradient between parts of Eastern Russia and Western Europe, as potential barriers to the diffusion of ideas between societies in Eurasia, instead choosing to blithely ignore them to fit his chosen hypothesis. To me that's a bit like saying that rather than teeth evolving to fit our diet, they evolved to improve our smile and hence give us more chance of attracting a mate. In other words, making up a theory to fit the facts and using the facts themselves as justification and choosing to ignore existing evidence.

To reinforce this impression in my mind, Diamond concludes by trying to justify his flimsy just-so explanations in a very patronising and unconvincing manner, suggesting that the main reason for disagreeing with them lies in a misunderstanding of the historical sciences and it's methods by the majority of people. He even goes as far as including the likes of evolutionary biology and astronomy in with history, suggesting that if we believe in the findings of the former disciplines, we should give more weight to the theories of the historical sciences (history). It is my belief that the findings within both astronomy and evolutionary biology are subjected to rigorous experimental testing, a belief which Diamond clearly does not hold. I could almost feel my faith and trust in Diamond as a scientist die inside me by the time I had turned the final page.

The whole thing is pretty flimsy. A few theories, which are either extroardinarily simple (geographical difference makes the difference in societies developments not the people) or flawed and/or lacking evidential support (the axis of the continent which a society inhabits makes a considerable impact upon it's development).

Finally the book is by and large, overwhelmingly dull. Diamond repeats himself like a broken record and wading through his prose feels at times like wading through thickened treacle on rubber stilts.

If you are looking for definitive answers to the central question of this book, answers that you feel assured are reasonably likely to be robust and accurate, this book does not provide them. It contains nuggets of trivia but that wasn't the reason I picked this off the bookshelf to read it and I think that would apply to most prospective readers.

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).

এই রিভিউটা কাট ছাট করে দেওয়া। আমার মূল রিভিউ এবং এর সাথে আমার ব্যাক্তিগত সংযোজন পাওয়া যাবে এই লিঙ্কে

মানুষ আসলে একা একা বা নিজের একার যোগ্যতায় তার উন্নয়ন করতে পারে না। মানুষের সেটা ব্যাক্তিগত হোক বা সামগ্রিক হোক, উন্নয়নের জন্য সবচেয়ে বড় যে উপাদানটা কাজ করে সেটা হলো তার পরিবেশ। তার পরিবেশ তাকে বাধ্য করে যেকোন বিষয়ে দক্ষ হওয়ার জন্য। যেমন গ্রামের একটা ছেলে স্বভাবতই জানবে কীভাবে মাছ মারতে হয় অথবা কীভাবে জমিতে ফসল বুনতে হয়। একইভাবে শহরের একটা ছেলে জানবে কীভাবে বাড়ির ছাদে ক্রিকেট খেলা যায় অথবা অনলাইনে কেমনে কম্পিউটারে গেম খেলা যায় অথবা শহুরে ব্যস্ত রাস্তায় গাড়ি চালানো যায়। ঠিক একইভাবে আজ থেকে ১৩০০০ বছর আগে হান্টার গেদারাররা পুরো পৃথিবী জুড়ে ছড়িয়ে ছিটিয়ে ছিল, তখন তাদের পরিবেশ তাদেরকে বাধ্য করেছে সেই পরিবেশে নিজেদেরকে মানিয়ে নিতে, সেই পরিবেশ সুযোগ করে দিয়েছে এক দল ���নগোষ্ঠীকে কৃষি কাজ করতে অন্য দলকে করেছে বঞ্চিত। বঞ্চিত দল রয়ে গেছে হান্টার গেদারার হিসেবেই।

কৃষি কাজ করার কারনে মানুষ তার প্রয়জনের অধিক খাদ্য তৈরি করতে পারলো, ফলে তা সংরক্ষণও করতে পারলো। এর ফলে কী হলো? মানুষ অবসর সময় পেলো খুব বেশি, সে সময় কাজে লাগিয়ে তার উন্নয়নের জন্য সে আরো বেশি চিন্তা করার সুযোগ পেলো, ফলে সে অস্ত্র এবং অন্যান্য সরঞ্জাম উৎপাদনে সাবলীল হয়ে উঠলো ফলে মানুষের শারীরিক শ্রম কমে গেলো, মানুষ এক যায়গায় বসবাস শুরু করলো। মানুষ গৃহপালিত পশুর সংখ্যা বাড়াতে লাগলো, আরাম আয়েশের জন্য মানুষের প্রজনন বাড়তে লাগলো, মানুষে সংখ্যা বৃদ্ধির জন্য সামাজিক জটিলতা বাড়তে শুরু করলো এবং একই সাথে সামাজিক উন্নয়নও হতে শুরু করলো। একটা সমাজ বা রাষ্ট্র যন্ত্র যত বেশি জটিল হবে তার উন্নয়ন তত বেশি হবে এবং এর ফলে মানুষে মানুষে মারামারি খুনো খুনি শুরু হল। ফলে মানুষ আরো বেশি জমি দখলের জন্য অন্য যেসব অঞ্চল আছে সেদিকে নজর দেওয়া শুরু করলো এবং সেসকল অঞ্চল দখল করা শুরু করলো। যেখানে হয়তো আগে থেকেই হান্টার গেদারাররা ছিল, তাদেরকে নির্মুল করে দিয়ে তাঁরা সেখানে নতুন করে আবাসন শুরু করলো। অন্যদিকে পশু পাখি ডমেস্টিকেট করার কারনে এবং অলস জীবন যাপনের কারনে মানুষের মাঝে নানা রোগ বৃদ্ধি পেতে শুরু করলো। যেসকল রোগ আবার হান্টার গেদারারদের ছিল না কখনো, ফলে তাদের এসব রোগের বিপক্ষে ইমিউনিটিও ছিল না ভালো, ফলে কৃষিতে সমৃদ্ধ জনগোষ্টি শুধু মাত্র ক্ষমতা আর শক্তির প্রয়োগ দিয়েই হান্টার গেদারারদের নির্মুল করেনি, তাদের উপহার দেওয়ার রোগের কারনেও হান্টার গেদারাররা নির্মুল হয়ে গেছে। এভাবেই আম্রিকা আর আফ্রিকানদের নির্মুল করেছিলো উরোপিয়ানরা।

সুতরাং সভ্যতার গোরাপত্তনের প্রাথমিক ভিত্তি ছিল অনুকূল পরিবেশ। এর ফলে কৃষি ভিত্তিক সমাজের গোড়াপত্তন এবং এর ফলে অবসর সময় এবং সমাজ সভ্যতার উন্নয়ন।

তাছাড়া আরও যেসব বিষয় উঠে এসেছে তা নিচে পয়েন্ট আকারে দেওয়া হলো:

- কীভাবে হান্টার গেদারারদের বিলুপ্তি হলো, কেন পুরো পৃথিবীর সমস্ত অঞ্চল জুরেই কৃষিকাজের সূচনা হল না, কেনো নির্দিষ্ট কিছু অঞ্চলে কৃষিকাজের সূচনা হলো, নির্দিষ্ট কিছু অঞ্চলে কৃষি কাজ শুরু হওয়ার পেছনে মূল কারন আসলে তার চারপাশের পরিবেশ। পরিবেশের উপযোগিতার উপর নির্ভর করেই আসলে ঐ অঞ্চলের মানুষ কৃষিকাজ শুরু করে, দিনের দৈর্ঘ, তাপমাত্রা, বৃষ্টির পরিমাণ, ঐ অঞ্চলে wild শস্য নানা কিছুর উপর নির্ভর করে প্রথম কৃষিকাজের সূচনা হয়।

- ন্যাচারাল সিলেকশনের মাধ্যমে কীভাবে আমরা নানা জাতের উদ্ভিদ আর প্রাণীকে ডমেস্টিকেট করতে পেরেছি, কেন বিশেষ কিছু প্রাণীকেই আমরা ডমেস্টিকেট করতে পারলাম, বাকিদের কেন ডমেস্টিকেট করতে পারিনি? এর কারণ হিসেবে লেখক ব্যাখ্যা করেছেন যে, কোন প্রাণীকে ডমেস্টিকেট করতে হলে সেই প্রাণী এবং মানুষের মাঝে বিশেষ কিছু বোঝাপড়া থাকতে হয়, এর মাঝে যেকোনো একটি যদি না মিলে তাহলে সেই প্রাণীকে ডমেস্টিকেট করা সম্ভব হয় না।

- জীবাণু কিভাবে ইভলভ করলো এবং কেন এক অঞ্ছলে এক ধরণের জীবাণুর বিস্তার বেশি কেন অন্য অঞ্ছলে অন্য ধরনের জীবাণুর বিস্তার বেশি, এই জীবাণুর বিস্তার মানব সভ্যতায় কত ভয়ানক প্রভাব ফেলেছে তা ব্যাখ্যা করেছেন।

- লেখালেখির সূচনা কীভাবে হলো, টেকনোলজির উদ্ভাবনের পেছনে আসলে মানুষের ব্যাক্তিগত নাকি সামগ্রিক ভূমিকা বেশি নাকি কৌতুহলই বেশি ভূমিকা রেখেছে তার তুলনামূলক আলোচনা করা হয়েছে।

- চীনের উত্থান, জাপানের উত্থান এবং এদের নিজস্ব একটা সংস্কৃতি আর অন্য সবার থেকে ব্যাতিক্রম হওয়ার ভৌগলিক কারণ ব্যাখ্যা করেছেন।

- আফ্রিকার ভৌগলিক বিচিত্রতার সাথে তার ইকোলজিক্যাল এবং প্রাণী বিচিত্রতার তুলনামূলক আলোচনা উঠে এসেছে। এবং মানব সভ্যতার সূচনা আফ্রিকাতে হলেও কেন সভত্যার প্রগতি এখান থেকে হতে পারেনি তারও সুন্দর একটা ব্যাখ্যা (পরিবেশের কারণ) পাওয়া যাবে এখানে।

Epilogue: The Future of Human History as a Science
2017 Afterword: Rich and Poor Countries in the light of Guns, Germs and steel.
এই দুইটা অংশ পড়তে আমার সবচেয়ে ভালো লেগেছে। থ্রিলার বইয়ের মতো আটকে ছিলাম এই দুইটা অংশ পড়ার সময়। বলা যায় পুরো বইয়ের থিওরেটিক্যাল আলোচনার সংক্ষিপ্ত রূপ এই দুই অধ্যায়ে উঠে এসেছে। আপনারা যারা এই বইয়ের সাইজ দেখে ভয় পাচ্ছেন, তারা অন্তত পুরো বই না পড়লেও Preface: Why is World History Like an Onion and Prologe: Yali's question, প্রথম চার অধ্যায় আর শেষের Epilogue and 2017 Afterword পড়ার জন্য সাজেস্ট করছি। এতটুকু পড়লেই এই বইয়ের মূল বিষয়বস্তু নিয়ে ৮০% ধারণা চলে আসবে।

বইয়ের ভালো না লাগা দিকঃ
প্রচুর প্রচুর এবং প্রচুর রিপিটেশন ছিল, একই কথা ঘুরিয়ে ফিরিয়ে নানা ভাবে নানা ভঙ্গিমায় উনি বলে গেছেন। বইটা ২০০-৩০০ পৃষ্টায় অনায়াসে শেষ করা যেতো। কলেজে থাকতে যেমন রচনা লেখার সময় মাথায় থাকতো, ২০ পৃষ্টা লিখতেই হবে, তখন একই কথা ইনিয়ে বিনিয়ে লিখতাম। উনার লেখা পড়ে মনে হইছে উনি তাই করছে। উনি প্রতিটা অধ্যায় ২৫-৩০ পৃষ্টা করছে, অনেকটা জোর করেই মনে হয়েছে আমার কাছে।

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

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.

Jared Diamond dives into a multi-disciplinary inquiry with this book. Among the intriguing questions he raises is: “Why weren't Native Americans, Africans, and Aboriginal Australians the ones who decimated, subjugated, or exterminated Europeans and Asians?” (Location 207) Of course there was the technology gap. But again, why? He starts with the end of the Ice Age around 11,000 BC when all humans were hunter-gatherers. “Why did human development proceed at
such different rates on different continents?” (Location 228)

As a geographer he notes that the “axis” of the American continents runs North-South. Migrants crossed significantly contrasting climates and ecosystems as they moved between latitudes. Eurasia's “axis” is roughly East-West. The comparative similarity of Eurasia's climate along this belt promoted more rapid spread of populations, agriculture, and technological invention. He notes that agriculture appears to have diffused outward from southwest Asia (the fertile crescent). In the Americas, agriculture appears to have risen independently in Mesoamerica and in South America.

For Diamond, agriculture was an integral part of what he calls an autocatalytic loop that included food storage, population density, domestication of mammals for transport and labor, specialization of labor, technological development and heirarchical political organization.

Localized plant species and an absence of large mammals further impeded development in the Americas and Africa. (He excludes elephants a priori. “[A] domesticated animal is defined as an animal selectively bred in captivity and thereby modified from its wild ancestors, for use by humans who control the animal's breeding and food supply).” (Location 2713) In the Americas he notes the absence of what he calls foundation species. Horses? Extinct. Bison? An interesting fact: “In the 19th and 20th centuries at least six large mammals – the eland, elk, moose, musk ox, zebra and American bison – have been the subject of especially well-organized projects aimed at domestication, carried out by modern scientific animal breeders and geneticists....Yet these modern efforts have achieved only very limited successes.” (Location 2899) A major hurdle to be blunt was “Nasty Disposition.” (Location 2945) In this category, the award apparently goes to the zebra.

He hypothecizes that domesticated animals harbored precursors to diseases that killed human populations but also promoted immunization. If correct this answers another question: “Why didn't Native American diseases instead decimate the Spanish invaders, spread back to Europe, and wipe out 95 percent of Europe's population?” (Location 3352)

Diamond revives the 19th century tradition of macrohistory in this quest for patterns and chains of cause and effect. The book is ambitious, but also grueling. My personal preference is for the microhistorical approach popularized by Mark Kurland, James Burke and Simon Winchester: choose a single object or event and draw a radiating web of connections. Nevertheless, this book was certainly thought-provoking. As new findings accumulate, it provides a useful organizational structure for future theorizing.

n  n    neden avrupalılar amerika'yı keşfetti de amerikalılar avrupa'yı keşfetmedi?n  n

birkaç yıl önce bir fuarda tübitak yayınları standında kitabın arka kapağını incelediğimi hatırlıyorum, yukarıdaki soru karşısında büyük bir şaşkınlık yaşadım önce ve hemen aldım biraz karıştırıp. iyi ki almışım çünkü kitabın baskısı vizyonsuz ve evrimden korkan hükûmet yetkililerin talimatları ile durduruldu ve uçuk fiyatlar ile -500 tl gördüm- satılıyor şimdi sahaflarda ya da bazı web sitelerinde.

günlük hayatta birçok gerçek karşısında müthiş bir duyarsızlık ile yaşıyoruz. sanki hep öyleymiş gibi geliyor bazı şeyler, mesela, mısır koçanları, her zaman bu kadar büyük müydü sence? bundan üç bin yıl önce de bu kadar bereketli miydi meyveler, sebzeler; yoksa çiftçilerin nesiller boyu en iyi tohumun ürünlerini üretip durmasıyla ilgisi var mı şimdi sahip olduğumuz verimli tarımın?

n  tüfek, mikrop ve çelikn çok iddialı olmayan okur hayatım içerisinde "iyi ki okudum" dediğim kitaplar içerisinde kesinlikle birinci sırada şimdi. insan ırkının müthiş kümülatif bilgisinin değerini fark ettim, ilk insanların dönemine bir bakış attım, tekrar günümüze yakın bir tarihe kadar geldim. neredeyse tüm süreçleri, belki de hiç zorlanmadan, resmen "izledim"

gerçekten müthiş bir şeydi diamond'un öğrencisi olmak. minnettarım kendisine. kitabın epub'ı var bende, yazan her arkadaşa mail atabilirim bu arada.



mö 10bin, insan ırkının başlangıç noktası; çiftçilerin tarihimizdeki rolü, anadolu toprakları bereketli hilal, bilinçsizce yetiştirilmiş ilk tarım bitkileri, zebraların neden evcilleştirilmemiş olması, neden aslan burger değil de dana burger yediğimizin sorgusu, hayvanların mikrop taşımacılığındaki rolü, mikropların ne kadar mikrop şeyler olduğu ve daha fazla üremek için hangi formlar arasında gezindiği, yazının evrimi, matbaanın icadı, icatların ihtiyaçların anası olması durumu, yönetimin ve dinlerin evrimi, çin, polinezya, avrupa, afrika, amerika, japonya...

bir çırpıda yazdığım şeylerin kaç tanesine hakimsin? ben neredeyse hiçbirine hakim değildim, sadece bir kitap ile bunların tamamını en azından bir kere okumuş olmam mucize gibi bir şey.

acılar, savaşlar ve soykırımlar görmüş emek dolu tarihimize bir bakış atmak isteyen her okura şiddetle tavsiyemdir.

hiçbir kitabı bu kadar övmedim burada, afet öğretmen oldum bir anda yemin ediyorum.

neyse ben kaçtım

In the fields of geography and history, there are few more nettlesome turns of phrase than the vaguely Eurocentric 'The Middle East' and the academically petulant 'The Common Era' (or C.E and B.C.E. as a replacement for A.D. and B.C.) Jared Diamond avoids both of these, while introducing the more precise 'Southwest Asia.' This is an early indicator of the exactness and objectivity he shows throughout this epic overview of civilization's building blocks.

When reading nonfiction, I am often impressed by a particular author's style, breadth of research or interest in the details of humanity. But before Guns, Germs and Steel, I was never so moved by the analysis of the information presented. Before Guns, Germs and Steel, I never considered a continent's long axis (either north-south or east-west) significant to the development of the people that live there. So when Diamond presented this theory, I was dubious. But after reading his argument with all its copious details and seeing this theory applied to all corners of the Earth, I was convinced.

This is a book for anyone who has wondered why Europeans conquered Australia and the Americas so much easier than Sub-Saharan Africa or New Guinea. It's for anyone who has wondered why South Africa looks so much more European than most of the rest of Africa. It's for anyone who has wondered why we don't eat acorns. It's for anyone who wants to see abhorrent theories about 'racial superiority' calmly blasted to smithereens. It's for anyone with the patience to have all their historical assumptions challenged over the course of 500 glorious pages.

Edited 3-16-2017

Γιατί κάποιοι λαοί επικράτησαν ,έναντι κάποιων άλλων; Γιατί κάποιες κοινωνίες εξελίχτηκαν περισσότερο; Οι απαντήσεις σε αφήνουν άφωνο. Ίσως μια καλή πρόταση σωφρονισμού ,για όσους κατηγορούνται για ρατσιστικά εγκλήματα , είναι να καλούνται να διαβάσουν αυτό το βιβλίο ! Τα πληρέστερα επιχειρήματα , έναντι κάθε ρατσιστικής διάθεσης. Ένας πραγματικός θησαυρός γνώσεων.

3.5 stars. May be because I read this after the Hariri, Gladwell and Mukherjee books; it felt not as intriguing and exciting as others in GR have experienced. The fact that it comes in sections not tied to one another makes reading less enjoyable. Nevertheless it was a good book with a lot of information.