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| Source: Amazon.com |
Guns, Germs and Steel: The
Fate of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond
Right off the bat, let me say that I had a harder time with this book, and so I will have to use a review from Amazon.com (I’m not a sponsor, by the way, but they can always sponsor me if they wish - haha) to flesh out the details. Then I’ll tell you what I liked and what I didn’t, and we’ll close the book on this one, so to speak.
The premise of Guns, Germs and Steel is that a reasonable explanation can be extrapolated from available resources as to why civilizations like the ancient Meso-Americans, Australian Aborigines and other so-called “primitive” groups did not develop modern technology and global power as did Asians, Europeans, and Euro-Asians (like the Russo-Slavs, who are a kind of crossbreed of East and West). Diamond describes the question here plainly by pointing out a conversation he had with a native of Papua New Guinea, one of the most primitive places on Earth, who asked the author why the peoples of New Guinea don’t have as much “cargo” (New Guinean speak for “wealth and goods”) as others in the world. Diamond then attempts to use the resources at his disposal to tell us his hypothesis on why this is so.
The book goes on to describe how civilizations formed, what factors were involved, and what advantages and disadvantages certain peoples had based on geography and resources. Much effort is put into discussing the rise of agriculture, the domestication of both plants and animals (some interesting points were made about the domestication of various large animals on continents, including the oft cited point that you can’t truly domesticate cats because cats are impossible to herd - just try it, I dare you), and other areas of the rise of what could be termed “classical” civilization. The material was fascinating and quite dense.
The book is a difficult one in places, at least from my point of view. I had a hard time following some of the pre-common era history that he is throwing around. We’re talking dates of 11,000 BC here. I have a hard time imagining the sixteenth century, let alone 13,000 years back! The way he bounces about from continent to continent, describing what the fossil record shows of various peoples from these ancient times is disconcerting, in my view. Not that he doesn’t do a good job of arguing the points he makes. Just that it is easy to get a bit of pre-history whiplash from time to time in his narration.
For one thing, he spends time talking about things that I am not convinced really happened as scientists hypothesize. The whole “people coming across the Bering Strait land bridge and populating the whole of North America and into South America” theory, for instance. I recently saw something on the Discovery channel that said the tools made by the so-called “Clovis” people (from the excavations of ancient peoples living outside what is now Clovis, New Mexico) don’t match up with what they find in Asia, but does match up with ancients in France. How did they get from ancient France to the Americas? By boat, the show hypothesized. Yes, I know TV channels can have spurious data and present it as fact, and we’re also talking about the same channel that shows “Ancient Aliens” and UFO Hunters” and things of that ilk. Or maybe that’s the History Channel. Either way, TV is not a fully reliable source of info, but I still found the idea refreshing.
Ok, back to the book review. Guns, Germs and Steel really shines for me when it gets to the parts about how more “modern” civilizations developed, and the concepts behind bands, tribes, chiefdom's, and states. This was something I could sink my teeth into.
And the conclusions he had about why he thinks those who got sophisticated far before those who didn’t was also intriguing, and makes sense to me. If I can summarize it, based on what I remember from reading it a couple weeks back, it goes something like this: 1) The transfer of “technology” going north to south and vice-versa was much slower than the exchange of tech between east and west. 2) Those who became good at “the game” of politics and technological manipulation for ambitious means were those who were exposed to it the most often, usually with painful periods of repeated conquests by hostile neighbors or even anybody who had a weapon and a hungry belly. 3) Those who didn’t develop as quickly as others were often sheltered from these effects, and so it isn’t a matter that they aren’t as “smart” as their more technological neighbors. They just have a different frame of reference. This I can really get behind. The Western idea of an IQ test is lacking in many ways, in my experienced opinion. An IQ test shows us how smart we are based on how we apply what is considered necessary intellectual content by Western standards.
Let me extrapolate an example. For instance, if a race of extraterrestrials came to this planet tomorrow and, through a process of getting to know each other, they were exposed to an IQ test and failed it. Would we say they weren’t smart? They had to be at least a little intelligent in order to get across the stars to where we are. It’s a big galaxy, after all, and pinpoint navigation would be required to go from point A to point B in such vast distances without getting a little off course and going somewhere entirely different. The argument could be made that creatures who travel the stars don’t have to be smart, just whoever sent them had to be the smart ones, but that is stretching it in my opinion.
Anyway, I am probably not doing justice to Diamond’s thesis here. The space travel analogy isn’t even his. I came up with that idea on my own, as a way of explaining what I understood him to say and what I personally feel about intelligence as a subject. If you want the real scoop on the book and its message, I’d recommend you read it yourself. It is good, if a bit complex, and is worth the time invested in it. Just don’t say that I recommended it wholeheartedly, as I did disagree with some of it. And didn’t understand some of it either. But isn’t that how life goes?
Right off the bat, let me say that I had a harder time with this book, and so I will have to use a review from Amazon.com (I’m not a sponsor, by the way, but they can always sponsor me if they wish - haha) to flesh out the details. Then I’ll tell you what I liked and what I didn’t, and we’ll close the book on this one, so to speak.
The premise of Guns, Germs and Steel is that a reasonable explanation can be extrapolated from available resources as to why civilizations like the ancient Meso-Americans, Australian Aborigines and other so-called “primitive” groups did not develop modern technology and global power as did Asians, Europeans, and Euro-Asians (like the Russo-Slavs, who are a kind of crossbreed of East and West). Diamond describes the question here plainly by pointing out a conversation he had with a native of Papua New Guinea, one of the most primitive places on Earth, who asked the author why the peoples of New Guinea don’t have as much “cargo” (New Guinean speak for “wealth and goods”) as others in the world. Diamond then attempts to use the resources at his disposal to tell us his hypothesis on why this is so.
The book goes on to describe how civilizations formed, what factors were involved, and what advantages and disadvantages certain peoples had based on geography and resources. Much effort is put into discussing the rise of agriculture, the domestication of both plants and animals (some interesting points were made about the domestication of various large animals on continents, including the oft cited point that you can’t truly domesticate cats because cats are impossible to herd - just try it, I dare you), and other areas of the rise of what could be termed “classical” civilization. The material was fascinating and quite dense.
The book is a difficult one in places, at least from my point of view. I had a hard time following some of the pre-common era history that he is throwing around. We’re talking dates of 11,000 BC here. I have a hard time imagining the sixteenth century, let alone 13,000 years back! The way he bounces about from continent to continent, describing what the fossil record shows of various peoples from these ancient times is disconcerting, in my view. Not that he doesn’t do a good job of arguing the points he makes. Just that it is easy to get a bit of pre-history whiplash from time to time in his narration.
For one thing, he spends time talking about things that I am not convinced really happened as scientists hypothesize. The whole “people coming across the Bering Strait land bridge and populating the whole of North America and into South America” theory, for instance. I recently saw something on the Discovery channel that said the tools made by the so-called “Clovis” people (from the excavations of ancient peoples living outside what is now Clovis, New Mexico) don’t match up with what they find in Asia, but does match up with ancients in France. How did they get from ancient France to the Americas? By boat, the show hypothesized. Yes, I know TV channels can have spurious data and present it as fact, and we’re also talking about the same channel that shows “Ancient Aliens” and UFO Hunters” and things of that ilk. Or maybe that’s the History Channel. Either way, TV is not a fully reliable source of info, but I still found the idea refreshing.
Ok, back to the book review. Guns, Germs and Steel really shines for me when it gets to the parts about how more “modern” civilizations developed, and the concepts behind bands, tribes, chiefdom's, and states. This was something I could sink my teeth into.
And the conclusions he had about why he thinks those who got sophisticated far before those who didn’t was also intriguing, and makes sense to me. If I can summarize it, based on what I remember from reading it a couple weeks back, it goes something like this: 1) The transfer of “technology” going north to south and vice-versa was much slower than the exchange of tech between east and west. 2) Those who became good at “the game” of politics and technological manipulation for ambitious means were those who were exposed to it the most often, usually with painful periods of repeated conquests by hostile neighbors or even anybody who had a weapon and a hungry belly. 3) Those who didn’t develop as quickly as others were often sheltered from these effects, and so it isn’t a matter that they aren’t as “smart” as their more technological neighbors. They just have a different frame of reference. This I can really get behind. The Western idea of an IQ test is lacking in many ways, in my experienced opinion. An IQ test shows us how smart we are based on how we apply what is considered necessary intellectual content by Western standards.
Let me extrapolate an example. For instance, if a race of extraterrestrials came to this planet tomorrow and, through a process of getting to know each other, they were exposed to an IQ test and failed it. Would we say they weren’t smart? They had to be at least a little intelligent in order to get across the stars to where we are. It’s a big galaxy, after all, and pinpoint navigation would be required to go from point A to point B in such vast distances without getting a little off course and going somewhere entirely different. The argument could be made that creatures who travel the stars don’t have to be smart, just whoever sent them had to be the smart ones, but that is stretching it in my opinion.
Anyway, I am probably not doing justice to Diamond’s thesis here. The space travel analogy isn’t even his. I came up with that idea on my own, as a way of explaining what I understood him to say and what I personally feel about intelligence as a subject. If you want the real scoop on the book and its message, I’d recommend you read it yourself. It is good, if a bit complex, and is worth the time invested in it. Just don’t say that I recommended it wholeheartedly, as I did disagree with some of it. And didn’t understand some of it either. But isn’t that how life goes?
The parting comment:
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| Source: LOL snaps.com |
I probably could use a clock like this one. My wife used to always complain that I was late for everything. Granted, I've gotten better. But still. Time... who needs it?
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