102. RyckNelson - March 1, 1999 - 7:03 PM PT
PE and others, you've all started on fairly clear paths. Could one of you finish with 11K years ago to say 4K and give the gist of hunter gatherers. How they might have developed communities and why (though it seems logic could answer this)whether by emerging leaders or sense of survival, communal need, etc...?
103. ScottLoar - March 1, 1999 - 7:12 PM PT
Bands of hunter-gatherers are the most primitive and initial form of human society, their diets and movements in accord with the seasons. They roam within a territory, usually defined by custom and the neighbors who are also keen for survival and so maintain the common border of territory. The bands are usually small, mortality is high and fecundity low, and the social structure is simple as there is little specialization and almost no differentiation of labour other than between men and women, young and old. Jared Diamond postulates that within the next decade this oldest form of human society will become extinct. In other words, what you see being quickly extinguished in the jungles of Sarawak seems irreversible and conclusive.
104. RyckNelson - March 1, 1999 - 7:16 PM PT
yes, i know. meeting some of them and considering they desired to be left to the jungle has stayed with me. as you know.
105. AzureNW - March 1, 1999 - 8:53 PM PT
ScottLoar -
"Bands of hunter-gatherers are the most primitive and initial form of human society, their diets and movements in accord with the seasons. They roam within a territory, usually defined by custom and the neighbors who are also keen for survival and so maintain the common border of territory."
You make these comments with the authority of someone who knows exactly what he is talking about based on personal experience. Are there hunter-gatherers in your family, too?
106. AzureNW - March 1, 1999 - 9:00 PM PT
uzmakk -
Re: Message #99
"The book is about the evolution of modern conciousness not about race."
Well, if the book concerns the disparate evolution of one group of modern humans compared to another, it's about a type of categorization of humans based on physiology that serves as well as race.
107. ScottLoar - March 2, 1999 - 4:19 AM PT
AzureNW, I have no personal experience, and it's now so many generations removed I cannot tell between imagination and collective memory.
108. RyckNelson - March 2, 1999 - 4:52 AM PT
as with the Penan (the last in Sarawak to hunt and gather) they joined bands based upon familial ties. the election of a headman became important as the bands learned about each other and communication of each bands needs or desires would transpose via the headman or his elected speaker. meetings will take place at a designated spot and at that point bonds will be strengthened by having a feast. much preparation will go into this taking many days for the host band, for that matter it takes many days just to meet. one and others having to cross vast tracks of rainforest.
if my synopsis of Penan life has relevance to the book i am hoping that it is with explaining the so called primitive life we humans have come from to that at which we find disparities of lifestyle today. i do not judge the disparities, rather draw attention to them. as this book undoubtedly has as its intent.
109. RyckNelson - March 2, 1999 - 6:06 AM PT
don't define my last sentence incorrectly, i am intrigued by disparity and am wishing to read all that is posted.
thank you all for your clear work. i've especially enjoyed PE's opening posts.
110. Msivorytower - March 2, 1999 - 6:19 AM PT
Ryck
I don't really see this book as being about hunter-gatherers. I'm not sure what you're getting at in your posts. The comparison between the different lifestyles takes place within an ecological framework and is NOT a comparison of the pros or cons of either. Rather it examines how variations in environment determined the development of inequality among peoples and regions of the world because it set each on a different time path for developing technology, weapons, and even germs.
111. millhead - March 2, 1999 - 6:26 AM PT
PE,
Bravo. I intend to pick the book up this week and hope to post my thoughts soon. I thoroughly enjoyed your summary. It lured me into the topic at hand.
I simply wish I had as much time to read and post as I used to...
112. uzmakk - March 2, 1999 - 6:39 AM PT
Erasmus:
I am not going to discuss Jaynes. I am going to stick strickly to Diamond, unless ofcourse, a great void opens up in the Diamond book that I can fill with Jaynes. It is interesting to try to understand precisely what Jaynes is refering to when he speaks of "conciousness".
I don't recall, and do not have a copy of the Illiad presently, but did the Greeks ask the Gods what to do when they came to a stalemate? Did the Gods come up with the idea of the Trojan horse? I'm asking. Because what we now consider to be thought may have originally manifested itself as a voice in the head. Your"thought" would "tell" you the ideas.
My offer still stands WRT my trip to Princeton. Anyone who is interested in reading Jaynes and giving me some questions can perhaps have them answered by the old bird himself before he passes into the great beyond. I understand he still stands by his theory. I will wait until Spring is in full bloom, or perhaps just the daffodils, before I make my little sojourn. I shall make a telephone call this very morning.
113. uzmakk - March 2, 1999 - 6:42 AM PT
And then, ofcourse, its off to Guns, Germs, and Steel.
114. Raskolnikov - March 2, 1999 - 7:41 AM PT
The Iliad ends with the funeral of Hector. The Trojan Horse story isn't told in the book. (I can't remember if it is discussed in the Odyssey, but I know the fall of Troy is discussed in the Aeniad, written centuries later in a different country).
115. Pseudoerasmus - March 2, 1999 - 10:44 AM PT
Summary of Chapter 1
UP TO THE STARTING LINE
This aptly named chapter can be read in its entirety at Amazon.com. So I will provide only a bare-bones summary of a chapter which is already a highly compact summary of human prehistory from millions of years ago to approximately 11,000 BC, the date that "corresponds approximately to the beginnings of village life in a few parts of the world, the first undisputed peopling of the Americas, the end of the Pleistocene Era and the last Ice Age". The summary will only highlight those parts which will prove informative later in the book.
The history of biologically and behaviourally modern humans began around 50,000 years ago -- the so-called "Great Leap Forward" -- when the first standardised stone tools and the first preserved jewelry appeared. It is not known exactly where the Great Leap Forward occurred, or if it occurred in one place at all. According to one theory, it occurred in Africa and thereafter human beings fanned out to the other continents. According to another theory, it occurred in several different places, such as Africa, Europe, China and Java, _after_ proto-humans had already scattered outside Africa. The evidence is ambiguous, but either way, it doesn't really matter to the subsequent story.
In what may have been an eerie precursor of things to come 400 centuries later in the Americas and Australasia, the Cromagnons migrated to Europe and, with their modern brains, superior technology, and language skills, apparently exterminated and displaced the Neanderthals "who had been evolving as the sole occupants of Europe for hundreds of thousands of years". At least there is little or no evidence that Neanderthals and Crogmanons intermarried.
116. Pseudoerasmus - March 2, 1999 - 10:48 AM PT
Summary of Chapter 1
UP TO THE STARTING LINE
[continued from Message #115]
"The great leap Forward coincides with the first proven major extension of human geographic range since our ancestors' colonisation of Eurasia. That extension consisted of the occupation of Australia and New Guinea, joined at that time into a single continent" by the diminution of water levels during the Ice Age. Most of the vast archipelago that today we think of as Indonesia was also one big dry landmass, separated from Australasia/New Guinea only by exiguous stretches of water.
Thus, the Ice Age permitted the settlement of Australasia by peoples from Eurasia, perhaps 35,000 years ago. Of which the most important consequence for the purposes of our book was the first mass extermination of large animal species at the hands of human beings. Unlike Africa and Eurasia, Australasia today has no mammal larger than 100-pound kangaroos, but the fossil record suggests that at the time of human settlement the continent veritably teemed with imposing mammals and reptiles. Whereas in Africa and Eurasia large animals coevolved with protohuman hunters and thus became natually wary of people, a healthy fear of man failed to evolve among the beasts of Australasia on account of isolation from people. (If only Dr. Zeas was there to tell those 2-ton marsupials how evil man was.) Something very similar probably happened in Siberia after Eurasian settlers arrived en masse.
Eurasians too were permitted by the Ice Age to cross the Bering Strait and to settle the Americas, sometime between 14,000 and 35,000 years ago. "Like Australia/New Guinea, the Americas had originally been full of big mammals. About 15,000 years ago, the American West looked much as Africa's Serengeti Plains do today, with herds of elephants and horses pursued by lions and cheetahs, and joined by members of such exotic species as camels and giant ground sloths."
117. Pseudoerasmus - March 2, 1999 - 10:52 AM PT
Summary of Chapter 1
UP TO THE STARTING LINE
[continued from Message #116]
So, the ancestors of the one-with-nature visionquest types apparently drove many species to extinction.
The Americas were the last of the habitable continents to be peopled, after Africa, Eurasia and Australasia. "What significance, if any, do the continents' differing dates of settlement have for subsequent history?" Did anyone get a headstart because of where they ended up settling?
The rest of the book answers yes.
118. msivorytower - March 2, 1999 - 10:59 AM PT
PE
The single most important bit of information for me in this chapter was that wherever migrations of modern humans took them into virgin territory (never before settled by peoples), the humans hunted the big game to total extinction.
So much for the reverence of the "ancients" for nature! Very good stuff.
The consequences of their actions were to be felt down the millenium. It ended up affecting virtually everything.
119. wabbit - March 2, 1999 - 11:23 AM PT
uzmakk Message #112,
"My offer still stands WRT my trip to Princeton. Anyone who is interested in reading Jaynes and giving me some questions can perhaps have them answered by the old bird himself before he passes into the great beyond."
You are a bit too late.
120. tmachine - March 2, 1999 - 11:26 AM PT
wabbit my wuv, are you still there?
121. wabbit - March 2, 1999 - 11:27 AM PT
you betcha...
122. tmachine - March 2, 1999 - 11:47 AM PT
are you ever in my fair city? can we meet? it's been far too long. And now I see elliot is coming, do you think he'd be up for a frayfling?
123. ScottLoar - March 2, 1999 - 1:00 PM PT
Well, not exactly, because there is still big game on the African continent as in North America before the arrival of the Europeans and their more efficient technology at killing big game. The big game that survived did so because numbers (wildebeest, bison) or ferocity (grizzly bears) or size (elephant, whale) or remoteness (mountain goats and sheep) were beyond the technological reach of man. Those animals without the numbers or fleetness or ferocity or cunning or inaccessibility to distance themselves from man fell. In other words, from past to present, man exploits his environment to the limits of his technology. The present technology assures that the large herds (giraffe, gazelle, wildebeest, zebra) and big game (cape buffalo, hippo) of Africa will soon go the way of the rhino and hippo and countless specie that preceded their place on the veldt and plains.
124. Pseudoerasmus - March 2, 1999 - 1:01 PM PT
Let me amplify Msit's response in Message #111 to RyckNelson's Message #102.
The book is not about hunter-gatherers, though it's obvious that Diamond having worked and lived among them loves them dearly.
The point Diamond is trying to make is that every culture represents an optimal adaptation to the physical environment a people finds itself in. Optimal, in the sense that the physical tools that get invented, the animals that get domesticated, the social & economic organisation that emerges, and the immunities to diseases one has developed, are _the_best_possible_ones_ given the constraints of the physical environment. So if agricultural civilisations invented writing but hunter-gathers did not, it's only because both were adapting to their respective environments.
As some might have already noticed, this is pure environmental determinism. There was never some indispensable "Time's Man of Prehistory", a visionary hero who domesticated plants in the Tigris or the Nile valley. If he hadn't done it, somebody else would have eventually. If we went back 35,000 years into prehistory and switched the peoples who eventually populated the Middle East with the people who eventually populated Australasia, then the details may turn out different, but the larger outcome, the broadest patterns, should remain the same. That is, Australasians would still be hunter-gatherers 35,000 years later while the Middle East would still see the rise and fall of powerful settled empires feeding on mass agriculture, wielding advanced weapons and producing a large body of writing.
The environment determines the long-term outcome. Culture and personalities only drive events in the short term.
And just to stress the point, Diamond remarks that all societies between 15,000 and 10,000 years ago were made up of hunter-gatherers. That is, we all started out equal.
125. msivorytower - March 2, 1999 - 1:02 PM PT
Oh that's an excellent qualification, Scott. I agree completely.
126. ScottLoar - March 2, 1999 - 1:02 PM PT
Correction: Hippos of course don't herd, they pod, and so are a poor example of herding animal. But they, too, will be reduced.
127. ScottLoar - March 2, 1999 - 1:04 PM PT
Strike Message #126 as superfluous.
128. Pseudoerasmus - March 2, 1999 - 1:04 PM PT
Message #123
Not exactly what??
129. Pseudoerasmus - March 2, 1999 - 1:06 PM PT
I don't understand what Loar's remarks are a qualification of.
130. Jenerator - March 2, 1999 - 1:06 PM PT
I'm not sure when or where to say this, but my former physics professor mentioned that he believed that a country's success (becoming a Thirld World Nation vs Top Nation) was influenced by whether or not that country used ox-pulled tillers vs. man pushed tillers.
He was always rambling bits of trivia here and there, but is there any truth to this, and if so, does it relate in any way to Diamond's observations regarding success of certain nations?
131. ScottLoar - March 2, 1999 - 1:07 PM PT
Corrigendum Message #123: will soon go the way of the rhino and elephant and countless specie
132. msivorytower - March 2, 1999 - 1:08 PM PT
My comments PE regarding the total extinction of all big game wherever migrating humans entered virgin territory after developing the technology to kill them in Eurasia.
133. ScottLoar - March 2, 1999 - 1:10 PM PT
My message Message #123 refers of course to the first paragraph of Message #118.
134. msivorytower - March 2, 1999 - 1:10 PM PT
PE
My Message #118.
Jenerator,
I don't think Diamond would divide up the world that way.
135. Jenerator - March 2, 1999 - 1:16 PM PT
MsIT,
He wasn't using it in the sense that it was *thee* defining characteristic. Instead, he mentioned something like 'all or most third world nations have persisted in using man for work instead of ox (later, machinery) thus stalling their technological advances, and perpetuating their lower status'.
136. ScottLoar - March 2, 1999 - 1:16 PM PT
The tilling of soil depends on the level of technology. Fertile river bottoms comprise loose soils easily worked with digging tools; fertile soils supporting thick grasses need be worked by the pulled plow. Oxen can be yoked and eat roughage, but a horse needs the horse collar to efficiently pull with its shoulders, and the invention of the steel mouldboard plow was needed before the praries of Illinois and Iowa could be plowed under. Again, successive technology exploiting the available resource.
137. uzmakk - March 2, 1999 - 1:20 PM PT
Wabbit,Message #96
Shit. No wonder no one has called me back. Last time I asked Jaynes was still alive. How time flies.
138. uzmakk - March 2, 1999 - 1:23 PM PT
Sorry, that was Message #119. And thank you wabbit.
139. AzureNW - March 2, 1999 - 1:35 PM PT
John Allman, a professor of psychobiology at the California Institute of Technology, thinks dogs may have played an important role in the expansion of homo sapiens around the globe.
140. CoralReef - March 2, 1999 - 1:44 PM PT
20753. AzureNW - Feb. 24, 1999 - 4:48 PM PT
Message #20739
I'll not participate in your book reading discussion.
141. AzureNW - March 2, 1999 - 1:45 PM PT
Jenerator -
"...most third world nations have persisted in using man for work instead of ox..."
a clue:
Did your professor note that oxen only live in certain parts of the world?
142. AzureNW - March 2, 1999 - 1:46 PM PT
Re: Message #140
I haven't said anything about any book.
143. Jenerator - March 2, 1999 - 1:52 PM PT
Azure,
What's your problem this week?
144. AzureNW - March 2, 1999 - 1:55 PM PT
Jenerator -
This week, I've got obscure network problems up the yingyang. What's your problem?
145. Jenerator - March 2, 1999 - 1:57 PM PT
I don't have a problem. I was just interested in any comments regarding my profs simple comment, and you came in here in predictable fashion and used my posts as a way to get your jabs in.
146. AzureNW - March 2, 1999 - 1:57 PM PT
Jenerator -
You're not still looking for a boyfriend in the Fray, are you? Give it up and get a life.
147. Pseudoerasmus - March 2, 1999 - 1:58 PM PT
Jenerator, Azure
Shut the fuck up, or take it elsewhere, and stop polluting my thread with your inanities.
148. AzureNW - March 2, 1999 - 2:02 PM PT
Jenerator, are you as tempted to trash this thread now as I am? You can say the devil made you do it.
149. Jenerator - March 2, 1999 - 2:04 PM PT
PE,
I posted Message #130 and Message #135 to see what any comments would be, also thinking that it was slighly related to this book discussion.
Then your rude Message #147. I don't see you being as protective with 'inanities' especially wrt Message #119 through Message #122.
I am genuinely interested in this thread, and wasn't look for a fight the way Azure is.
150. pellenilsson - March 2, 1999 - 2:04 PM PT
Hear, hear.
151. Jenerator - March 2, 1999 - 2:05 PM PT
Besides that, I ordered _Guns, Germs and Steel_!
152. pellenilsson - March 2, 1999 - 2:06 PM PT
My Message #150 naturally refers to PE's Message #147
153. Pseudoerasmus - March 2, 1999 - 2:08 PM PT
Jenerator: Your Message #130 and Message #135 were perfectly appropriate.
154. Pseudoerasmus - March 2, 1999 - 3:16 PM PT
By the way, for those interested in a more elaborate treatment of human prehistory, from African origins to the rise of agriculture, I recommend the very readable The Great Human Diasporas: The History of Diversity and Evolution by the distinguished Italian geneticist Luigi Cavalli-Sforza. It contains a 40-page chapter on the rise of agriculture which I will summarise later, in order to compare with Diamond's account.
155. Slackjaw - March 2, 1999 - 4:33 PM PT
wolves & homo sapiens
156. ScottLoar - March 2, 1999 - 5:12 PM PT
re Message #155, but I don't see why wolves would favour Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens and Neanderthals both hunted and ate those ungulates Allman supposes prejudiced wolves to modern man. The skeleton remains of Neanderthals show breaks and fractures most similar to bronc and bull riders, meaning Neanderthals in gangs chased down and then like rodeo riders bodily wrested large animals to bring them down; the hunting weapons and tools of Neanderthals testify to brutes of massive strength, all of which would make Neanderthals efficient hunters bringing down lots of big animals - and it would seem plenty of leavings for scavengers like wolves following the kill. When Neanderthals lost out to Homo sapiens I doubt it was for reason of Allman's "partnership" between man and wolf.
Incidentally, I'd bet (I may be wrong) that wolves never took hold in Africa because more efficient and stronger scavengers like hyenas combined with the pressures of jackals and wild dogs collectively disallowed the wolf a niche in the same territory. Witness the spread of the coyote, once confined to the most arid regions of northern Mexico and the southwest, throughout much of the continental US as wolves retreated.
157. ScottLoar - March 2, 1999 - 5:32 PM PT
I also remember it posited that wolves and man complement each other - the height and keen eyesight of man allowing a broad and long plane of vision to spot game and the keen-nosed and fleet wolf to track then bring down wounded game - yet these same configurations would serve Neanderthal and wolf.
158. Pseudoerasmus - March 2, 1999 - 6:07 PM PT
Well, the piece says that there is no archaeological evidence that the Neanderthals domesticated wolves at all.
159. jayackroyd - March 2, 1999 - 6:09 PM PT
Message #123
Actually, it was mostly the tsetse fly.
160. ScottLoar - March 2, 1999 - 7:22 PM PT
re Message #159, good point. A mountain range, an ocean, a saliva bug can keep us at bay until our technology overcomes it.
161. Pseudoerasmus - March 2, 1999 - 7:37 PM PT
Diamond observes several times that Africa was the only continent among the three principal weaker continents whose people could oppose its own germ weapons to those of the Europeans.
162. AzureNW - March 2, 1999 - 8:41 PM PT
Europeans have always been full of contagion. They were the first people in the world to routinely defecate into their neighbors' drinking water.
163. BobaFett - March 2, 1999 - 8:51 PM PT
Scott Loar:
The question isn't one of the wolves "favoring" one species over another. It's a question of technology-- the technology of primitive domestication and husbandry. The article suggests that homo sapiens developed this primitive technology and profited from it, while homo erectus and neanderthal didn't and were the poorer for it.
Keeping wild animals--and hunting, potentially man-eating animals to boot-- with the tribe isn't an obvious idea, you know. I'm sure that wolves just hung outside human tribes for a while, waiting for discarded carcasses and such. And most likely, many human/protohumans probably just chased off these scavengers or hunted them.
Aeons later we now know that the wolf has been bred into man's best friend. But the profitability of such a unique partnership wouldn't have been obvious to most people at the time.
164. BobaFett - March 2, 1999 - 8:52 PM PT
Azure:
Well, Indians have been defecating and urinating into their own water (the Ganges, for example) since time immemorial.
You really are such a knee-jerk "Europeans suck and are the Original Sin" twit.
165. BobaFett - March 2, 1999 - 8:58 PM PT
Pseudo:
While I have been interested in this topic before, I'm not very interested in it at the current moment, and I won't be commenting here much.
However, I'd like to say you certainly have taken this seriously. I read your initial posts and found them interesting and full of valuable information. You definitely provided a good starting point for discussion.
Congratulations on a nice job of moderating.
166. AzureNW - March 2, 1999 - 9:04 PM PT
BobaFett -
You must be quite old to have so little wit left.
167. BobaFett - March 2, 1999 - 9:16 PM PT
On guns:
Someone earlier queried whether guns were really that ineffective during this period. They were. Not only did they take a long time to reload, and were wildly innacurate, but they weren't all that powerful, either. Today's rifled barrels provide accuracy. And today's gunpowder (along with the better fit between bullet and barrel, thus trapping all the propellant force behind the projectile rather than letting it blow, wastefully, past the projectile) propels the projectiles to much greater, more lethal, velocities.
As to the psychological effect of guns: Certainly explosives of any kind of psychologically powerful to anyone, let alone to someone completely unfamiliar with them. And certainly this may have contributed the the Incas misimpression of the Spaniards as "gods."
But the power and lethality of steel blades would also be psychologically powerful. And steel blades certainly did most of the actual killing at this time.
I don't know if this has been remarked on earlier, but it strikes me that
168. BobaFett - March 2, 1999 - 9:21 PM PT
Note: The comments in the last post apply to handguns, not to cannons. Cannons were obviously more effective at their intended purpose. But I don't think the Spaniards had too many of them, and I don't know if they ever really needed them (i.e., were there any sieges of Incan cities with strong walls?). But maybe Pseudo or somebody else would know.
169. MrSocko - March 2, 1999 - 9:29 PM PT
Azure, Jenerator: The general rule is that people don't go despoiling hosted threads. It's a simple courtesy.
170. MrSocko - March 2, 1999 - 9:36 PM PT
Azure, Jenerator: The general rule is that people don't go despoiling hosted threads. It's a simple courtesy.
171. AzureNW - March 2, 1999 - 9:43 PM PT
No one is despoiling anything.
172. AzureNW - March 2, 1999 - 9:44 PM PT
Around here.
173. AzureNW - March 2, 1999 - 10:25 PM PT
Seriously, MrSocko, you must know I have no desire whatsoever to disrupt the discussion of this book. I wish only to make my presence known, as a courtesy.
174. AzureNW - March 2, 1999 - 10:49 PM PT
Pseudoerasmus -
"You are a destructive element."
I don't understand this statement, and I believe I deserve an explanation of it so that I do understand, don't you? After all, you're talking about a discussion of a book you know I have read in a chat group restricted to a couple dozen participants almost all of whom I have talked to about all kinds of things for more than a year. What am I destructive of, at this point? You're not freaking out because you've finally noticed how aboriginal I am, are you?
I'll keep my piece, if that's what you want me to do. But I want you to explain this statement to me, "publicly," since you've made a public issue of it in the Fray.
175. Pseudoerasmus - March 2, 1999 - 11:28 PM PT
CHAPTER 2
A Natural Experiment of History
"On the Chatham islands, 500 miles east of New Zealand, centuries of independence came to a brutal end for the Moriori people in December 1835. On November 19 of that year, a ship carrying 500 Maori armed with guns, clubs, and axes arrived, followed on December 5 by a shipload of 400 more Maori. Groups of Maori began to walk through Moriori settlements, announcing that the Moriori were now their slaves, and killing those who objected. An organised resistance by the Moriori could still then have defeated the Maori, who were outnumbered two to one. However, the Moriori had a tradition of resolving disputes peacefully. They decided in a council meeting not to fight back but to offer peace, friendship, and a division of resources. Before the Moriori could deliver that offer, the Maori attacked en masse. Over the course of the next few days, they killed hundreds of thousands of Moriori, cooked and ate many of the bodies, and enslaved all the others, killing most of them too over the next few years as it suited their whim."
The first thing that came to my mind when reading this chapter is _synecdoche_, the representation of the whole by a part. The virtual extermination of the Moriori by the Maori represents in microcosm the pattern of conquest of the weaker by the stronger throughout human history. "What makes the Maori-Moriori collision grimly illuminating is that both groups had diverged from a common origin less than a millennium earlier". Both groups were Polynesian. The Maori descended from a people who had colonised New Zealand's North Island around 1000 AD and proceeded to create a densely populated agricultural society, "chronically engaged in ferocious wars, equipped with more-advanced technology and weapons and operating under strong leadership".
176. Pseudoerasmus - March 2, 1999 - 11:28 PM PT
A small group of the same Maori set up shop on the distant Chatham Islands and evolved in total isolation from the Maori back on New Zealand. Because the environment of the Chatham Islands did not permit intensive farming, the new Moriori reverted to being hunter-gatherers in what can only be called technological retrogression. The tragic reunion between the Moriori and the Maori is as strong a proof as any that environment powerfully determines the inequality among human societies.
Diamond proceeds to elaborate in some detail how great is the environmental diversity of the larger Polynesia. Whether in climate, geology, marine resources, area, terrain fragmentation, or isolation, the scattered islands of Polynesia, from New Zealand to Hawaii, exhibit an astounding variation. And this environmental variation is mirrored by cultural variation: Polynesia contained everything from caste societies to egalitarian systems; intensive farming to hunter-gathering; and population densities ranging from 5 persons per square mile to 1100 persons per square mile. The amazing thing about all this is that the inhabitants of all these hundreds of diverse Polynesian societies descended from a common ancestor. "In short, Polynesia furnishes us with a convincing example of environmentally related diversification of human societies in operation".
But enough. Diamond has, and we have, made this point over and over again. Now, on to the blood-dripping meat of the matter: tomorrow, we begin Part II of the book, "The Rise and Spread of Food Production".
177. Pseudoerasmus - March 2, 1999 - 11:32 PM PT
By the way, in respect of the chapter on Polynesia, I commend and recommend once again ptboya's remarks in Message #29.
Just as Darwin observed that isolation induced a separate evolution of species on the Galapagos islands, so Diamond observes that mutual isolation induced a highly variegated cultural speciation in Polynesia.
178. Pseudoerasmus - March 2, 1999 - 11:35 PM PT
AzureNW (Message #174)
It is my intention to see this thread densely packed with thoughtful posts like the ones we've already seen from ScottLoar, Msivorytower, Raskolnikov, Ptboya, FreeToChoose, Slackjaw, JayAckroyd and BobaFett. I don't mind the occasional bizarre diversion, like the one on Jaynes, as long as it's not completely mindless. But catfights, putrid self-exculpations, personal vendette, monosyllabic utterances, airing of psychological problems and other self-indulgences are not welcome.
Discuss the book if you like. Ask questions. Critique the author. Do whatever you want as long as it is related to the topic of the thread. But notice that all your many posts today except the lonely Message #139 had absolutely nothing to do with the book at all. And that was just a link.
You are to this thread what bread fillers are to sausages.
Note: please do NOT respond to this post, unless it is a question or a remark about Jared Diamond's book, "Guns, Germs and Steel".
179. MrSocko - March 3, 1999 - 2:34 AM PT
Well, the Maoris first came to what is now New Zealand in 1200, not 1000.
They were not called Maoris -- the Europeans gave them this name centuries later-- and did not all originate from the same place. They did not even speak the same language.
The Maoris did not, as Diamond avers, kill "hundreds of thousands of Moriori." How could they, when the total Maori population of "New Zealand" probably numbered only a few-score thousand, and the Moriori probably only a few thousand? Where the hell did he get these figures from?
180. MrSocko - March 3, 1999 - 2:42 AM PT
(New Zealand Maoris are not so much a race as an ad hoc collection of New Zealand-based Polynesian tribes, in much the same manner as American Indian groupings. The idea of thousands of them going to the Chathams makes absolutely no sense. It simply never happened that way.)
181. RyckNelson - March 3, 1999 - 3:46 AM PT
good question Mr.Socko.
i would wonder how the figure could be told over so many years of undocumented history. the idea that a canabalistic peoples could document their numbers in some fashion to allow the future historians a chance to evaluate the happenings of the time seems far fetched. though i suppose it's possible another group somehow documented events to some extent and then we extrapolated populations based on median populations of the areas involved. i know what i'm trying to say and i hope it's understandable, if i've used the wrong statistical language please forgive it.
MsIt and PE,
thankyou for taking the time to put the huntergatherer issue i have to clarification. i know how the peoples are as Mr.Diamond and i too have a passion for the life one has lived and the disruptions that others have upon it. Mr.Diamond is doing well to have established his knowledge of these fine, fair, caring people.
adhoc;
there is a kind of synergy of peoples in Sarawak. the Penan have been helped over millenium by other tribes. bartering would be an example, as when something another tribe developed was of interest, a good sized wild boar would be a price to gain the item. this is obvious material i'm suggesting, the blow pipe being the item with regard to my posting.
aside;
comparison of the Maori case to the Americas is due don't you think? these tribes have so much to say with regard to environment and development. or do they? i think they do but not on the european scale, i mean in their pre-european age.
182. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 5:05 AM PT
ERRATA (Message #175)
The phrase "hundreds of thousands of Moriori" should be HUNDREDS OF MORIORI. Pardon.
As for the date of New Zealand's settlement by the Maori, one source says the 9th century, another says the 11th century, yet another says the 10th. I say Diamond has it about right.
183. MrSocko - March 3, 1999 - 5:12 AM PT
Diamond is wrong. The 13th century is *about* right.
184. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 5:14 AM PT
Message #179
The Maori apparently numberd some 100,000 in New Zealand at the time of the incident with the Moriori.
The Chathams could, in Diamond's view, could at most support 2000 Moriori. Anyway, the population density of the Chathams at the time of the Maori conquest was 5 persons per square mile. His reference for the Moriori on the Chathams is "Moriori", by Michael King.
Message #180
Diamond does not say, even in the passage I incompetently quoted, "thousands" of Maori invaded the Chatham Islands. He says 900.
185. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 5:15 AM PT
Sorry, but no one takes Socko's word for it without a reference, given the dozens of silly things he says in the Fray.
186. MrSocko - March 3, 1999 - 5:22 AM PT
Message #184
Dolt! After claiming that the Morioris outnumbered Maoris two-to-one, you claim that the actual number of Morioris killed was somewhere in the "hundreds of thousands." It doesn't take a genius to infer that the number of Maoris in question must therefore of been scores of thousands.
The claim that there were 100,000 Maoris in "New Zealand" at this time is idiotic. King never made any such claim in his book: the probable number might have been 30,000.
187. MrSocko - March 3, 1999 - 5:24 AM PT
Sorry, but nobody takes PE seriously on Polynesia. He has already said that he knows nothing about this region and cares even less. He should stick to commenting on the deeply fascinating city of Paris.
188. MrSocko - March 3, 1999 - 5:28 AM PT
... "of been" = "have been" [the rant went in a different direction than intended]
189. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 5:28 AM PT
Message #186
Regarding the number of Maoris in New Zealand...
The reason King never made such a claim, I'm sure -- though I don't know for I have never read his book -- is that his book is about the Moriori, not the Maori. It says so right in my post.
Diamond has several different references for New Zealand and Polynesia as a whole. "Those Maori who stayed in New Zealand increased in numbers until there were more than 100,000 of them".
190. MrSocko - March 3, 1999 - 5:31 AM PT
The number is woefully incorrect. In 1900, Maoris may have constituted 30,000 inhabitants of these southern isles.
191. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 5:31 AM PT
Message #187
I know less than nothing about Polynesia, and I have said absolutely nothing about it other than to report what Diamond says.
192. MrSocko - March 3, 1999 - 5:32 AM PT
Also, at least some of the original Maoris probably came not from Hawaii but Taiwan...
193. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 5:34 AM PT
Message #192
Diamond doesn't talk about specifically where the Maori came from. I would like a reference for your Taiwan claim, however.
194. RyckNelson - March 3, 1999 - 5:35 AM PT
ok, it's the same time frame 1000-1300ad. the America's have been inhabited for how long i don't know. but they are experiencing similar experiences as that of the Maori with the exception of unproved canabalism on the continent. supposed canabalistic tendencies of peoples on some southern islands seems improbable to me yet not impossible.
i don't care about canabalism, so what is of interest is the environments of America prior to european influence. of most interest to me are what i've perceived to be the more advanced cultures of the east and west coasts. more advanced housing structures for settlement purposes is one point. gathering and cultivation of food another.
the plains were nomadic therefore using a teepee would be an excellent housing technique. but what are some points to make of the respective tribes, any?
i'm just looking for comments and then i may formulate some questions and add my own comments later. for now i'm hoping to see what's out there for interest with this topic as it relates to the book. i imagine it relates to a lot of the issues Diamond raises with regard to environment and then intrusion of outsiders and their germs.
i'm looking for interest and sharing of knowledge before the intrusion of germs.
195. tmachine - March 3, 1999 - 6:09 AM PT
ryck: Indian cultures did not stand still in the thousands of years before Europeans arrived. The coastal dwellers were not necessarily more "advanced" for all time. The Mound Dwellers--who lived around the great rivers in parts of an area that ranges from Ohio to Iowa, 1,000-plus years ago--had a relatively highly developed civilization with large cities, formal agriculture and a very refined class system. Ditto the southwestern Anasazi peoples, who were also a very long way from any coasts.
196. Msivorytower - March 3, 1999 - 6:14 AM PT
Socko, Ryck
The following are the sources used by Diamond for his discussion in Chapter 2:
Kirch, Patrick (1984) THE EVOLUTION OF THE
POLYNESIAN CHIEFDOMS
---- (1994) THE WED AND THE DRY
---- (1985) FEATHERED GODS AND FISHHOOKS
---- and Marshall Sahlins (1992) ANAHULU
Bellwood, Peter (1987) THE POLYNESIANS
King, Michael (1989) MORIORI
Van Tilburg, Jo Anne (1994) EASTER ISLAND
Bahn, Paul and John Flenley (1992) EASTER ISLAND, EARTH ISLAND
_______________
If you know of direct evidence that contradicts Diamond's view of things please present it (and could you provide the source?).
197. Msivorytower - March 3, 1999 - 6:20 AM PT
Yikes,
That should be the _WET_ not WED.
198. Msivorytower - March 3, 1999 - 7:04 AM PT
The thing that I found fascinating about the example of the Maori and the Moriori was the spectacular failure of a passive response and the idea of diplomacy.
It illustrates how diplomacy and non-aggression only works when you and the enemy have some common goals and similar incentives. In the case of the Maori, they wanted the land, they wanted the resources and evidently saw no reason to share with the Moriori. Brute force and aggression in this case could only be stopped with a similar response.
I take this as one of the innumerable examples in history that cautions us against too passive a view of other countries and cultures. Sometimes force and aggression are the ONLY possible responses.
I'm sure this may seem trite to many, but for me, it confirms a the skepticism and continued distancing of myself from the "peace, brotherly love, and idolization of the natural man" roots of my youth.
199. pellenilsson - March 3, 1999 - 11:10 AM PT
Ms Message #198
Very good points.
200. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 12:23 PM PT
PART TWO
The Rise and Spread of Food Production
CHAPER FOUR
Farmer Power [An Overview of the Advantages of Settled Life]
"Food production was indirectly a prerequisite for the development of guns, germs and steel", and "geographic variation in whether, or when, the peoples of different continents became farmers and herders explains to a large extent their subsequent contrasting fates."
The fundamental fact of settled food production is that it simply avails more consumable calories than hunting and gathering. In the wild, most species of plants and animals are useless as food because indigestible, poisonous, low in nutrition, difficult to gather or prepare, or otherwise dangerous to hunt. What agriculture does is massively augment the natural proportion of biomass which is edible: whereas only about 0.1% of an acre of wild land constitute edible biomass, cultivated land can fetch up to 90% per acre. This difference ultimately amounts to larger populations in agricultural societies than in hunter-gatherer ones.
The domestication of animals had numerous distinct advantages over hunting and gathering: besides providing meat and milk, they also furnished manure for fertiliser, energy in the form of pulling plows, and natural fibers for clothing, ropes and nets. Not to be underestimated is the revolution in human affairs achieved when large animals such as the horse were domesticated not only for conveyance and energy, but for transportation and waging war. The mastery of the horse is surely one reason the Indo-European tribes of Eurasia managed to wander so far and dominate such a large part of the continent.
A full division of labour is made possible by a settled existence. Whereas in hunter-gatherer societies everybody is a food producer, a settled society can let its members specialise in activities unrelated to food production, such as writing, religious services and research & development (i.e.,