He believes this is due to these societies' technological and immunological advantages, stemming from the early rise of agriculture after the last ice age. The peoples of other continents ( sub-Saharan Africans, Indigenous people of the Americas, Aboriginal Australians, New Guineans, and the original inhabitants of tropical Southeast Asia) have been largely conquered, displaced and in some extreme cases – referring to Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians, and South Africa's indigenous Khoisan peoples – largely exterminated by farm-based societies such as Eurasians and Bantu. Still others, he says, "have been decimated, subjugated, and in some cases even exterminated by European colonialists." : 15 the world in wealth and power." Other peoples, after having thrown off colonial domination, still lag in wealth and power. Yali asked, using the local term " cargo" for inventions and manufactured goods, "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?" : 14ĭiamond realized the same question seemed to apply elsewhere: "People of Eurasian origin. The conversation turned to the obvious differences in power and technology between Yali's people and the Europeans who dominated the land for 200 years, differences that neither of them considered due to any genetic superiority of Europeans. The prologue opens with an account of Diamond's conversation with Yali, a New Guinean politician. When cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians (for example, written language or the development among Eurasians of resistance to endemic diseases), he asserts that these advantages occurred because of the influence of geography on societies and cultures (for example, by facilitating commerce and trade between different cultures) and were not inherent in the Eurasian genomes.
Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate primarily in environmental differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops. The book attempts to explain why Eurasian and North African civilizations have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority. A documentary based on the book, and produced by the National Geographic Society, was broadcast on PBS in July 2005. In 1998, it won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the Aventis Prize for Best Science Book.
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (subtitled A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years in Britain) is a 1997 transdisciplinary non-fiction book by Jared Diamond. Why Is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human SexualityĬollapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
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