202. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 12:25 PM PT
...immunities to such diseases, the germs became powerful weapons against unsettled peoples who had never developed such immunities.
203. AzureNW - March 3, 1999 - 1:08 PM PT
Msivorytower -
Re: Message #198
"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."
What struck me about the Maori/Moriori example, aside from the startlingly morbid humor with which it is presented, was how quickly and completely the two cultures are shown to have diverged from the same starting point. The wide ranging diversity of Polynesian societies Diamond has been detailing is brought to a precise point in the account of the disasterous reunion of the Maori and Moriori.
204. msivorytower - March 3, 1999 - 1:36 PM PT
Azure
That too, of course. I expected that, however, I wasn't looking to see the larger lessons in history, and, as I noted in the very beginning, being struck by how absolutely naive it is to think "natives, primatives" imply good, and "developed peoples" implies bad.
I'm being reductionist in my comments, I know, but really, one of the things I like most about Diamond is how it connects for me on so many levels, and this is, I think, entirely due to its reach and scope.
205. AzureNW - March 3, 1999 - 1:53 PM PT
The differences that may emerge between groups of people that have remained separate for a time is a favorite subject of speculation in science fiction stories. But the reality of how much and how quickly human societies actually have diverged turns out to be more surprising than a lot of what I have seen imagined in fiction. (Larry Niven's "Integral Trees" series came to mind when I read about the Maori/Moriori reunion.)
206. AzureNW - March 3, 1999 - 2:00 PM PT
msivorytower -
Re: Message #204
Diamond's book does tear loose some of the familiar wrappings of guilt and blame that surround our usual ideas of race relations.
207. Wombat - March 3, 1999 - 2:14 PM PT
This should not be suprising: Today's Greeks and Turks are essentially the same genetically, although one wouldn't know it to hear them go on about their differences.
208. ScottLoar - March 3, 1999 - 2:23 PM PT
re Message #201, no, I doubt anyone could dispute that the decisive factor in the Maori Wars was Britain's maintenance of a professional army in the field opposed by the Maori's soldier-farmers. This is well catalogued in "The New Zealand Wars" by James Belich, Auckland University Press, 1986 (Penguin edition 1988). In fact, the Maori's early victories were by obliging the British to travel overland through dense forest and overextending their line of supply to gain Maori "pa" that were not base camps nor of strategic importance and so easily abandoned by the Maori without loss. Even British artillery was of little use against these "pa" as the defenders merely hunkered down in reinforced dugouts covered by stone and timber without loss, waiting for the British attack.
Incidentally, it seems to me the vital component to empire is the ability to maintain a professional army in the field. Those who can effectively do so by necessity must be competent in government through bureaucracy, taxation, logistics and transport, and have economic surplus that allows such a body to be maintained.
209. elliot803 - March 3, 1999 - 2:31 PM PT
MsIT:
"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."
*Sometimes*, yes. But I think the tendency has been to use force and aggression too much rather than not enough. And I am deeply skeptical that the example of the Maori and the Moriori illustrates a general truth about the inadequacies of diplomacy or passive resistance as form of conflict resolution.
210. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 2:35 PM PT
Just in case anyone has wondered, some information on lactational amenorrhea.
211. Wombat - March 3, 1999 - 2:39 PM PT
Elliot:
I think one has to pick one's spot when using passive resistance. Had Gandhi attempted passive resistance in an authoritarian or totalitarian society, he'd be one dead "fakir," as would his followers.
212. elliot803 - March 3, 1999 - 2:52 PM PT
Wombat: Yes, of course. I just don't think you can draw useful lessons about conflict resolution in general, and in particular about the effectiveness of force versus diplomacy or other methods in modern conflicts, from examples like the Maori/Moriori confrontation.
213. MrSocko - March 3, 1999 - 3:19 PM PT
Loar's cite (_The New Zealand Wars_) is considerably more weighty than the Michael King book that has so captivated Diamond. The subject of the Moriori has been endlessly thrashed in New Zealand, where the subject is often held up by conservatives as an excuse to deny Maoris rights to tribal land. I (and many New Zealanders, including those who still trace Moriori blood) would agree with elliot that this slice of Polynesian history doesn't really teach us very much about anything outside of its own peculiar context.
Michael King's latest "academic" work, for those who might be interested, is a history of "being white." It sounds deeply fascinating, I don't think.
214. MrSocko - March 3, 1999 - 3:23 PM PT
The Taiwan angle on Maori history is something that's received a fair amount of play in the NZ press over recent months. I can't find a link on the subject, though, which probably isn't surprising given that only one newspaper here is online. I know that some linguists have drawn comparisons between the languages of both, and there seems to be some physical evidence of similarities between the peoples.
215. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 3:25 PM PT
Message #213
"I...would agree with elliot that this slice of Polynesian history doesn't really teach us very much about anything outside of its own peculiar context."
I just marvel again at the complete divergence between your ability to write and your ability to read.
The alleged lesson in conflict resolution was not drawn by Diamond, but by Msivorytower. What Elliot took issue with was not Diamond's point -- with which I'm sure he wholeheartedly agrees -- but with Msit's point.
Diamond's "lesson" about the Maori and the Moriori seems quite sound to me -- that different environments in New Zealand and the Chathams led to the vastly different evolutions of their cultures. Again, cultural speciation.
216. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 3:25 PM PT
Message #213
"I...would agree with elliot that this slice of Polynesian history doesn't really teach us very much about anything outside of its own peculiar context."
I just marvel again at the complete divergence between your ability to write and your ability to read.
The alleged lesson in conflict resolution was not drawn by Diamond, but by Msivorytower. What Elliot took issue with was not Diamond's point -- with which I'm sure he wholeheartedly agrees -- but with Msit's point.
Diamond's "lesson" about the Maori and the Moriori seems quite sound to me -- that different environments in New Zealand and the Chathams led to the vastly different evolutions of their cultures. Again, cultural speciation.
217. MrSocko - March 3, 1999 - 3:33 PM PT
Message #215
Both you and Diamond are laboring under the complete misapprehension that New Zealand Maoris were/are one culture and the Morioris were another. There were dozens of quite distinct "Maori" cultures in New Zealand last century, signified by their tribal groupings. Some were every bit as pacific as the Moriori (who, after all, were simply another "Maori" tribe), some were warriors, some even saw themselves as the lost tribe of Israel.
218. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 3:38 PM PT
Message #214
"I know that some linguists have drawn comparisons between the languages of both..."
Some linguists??? The connection is established fact. Both Maori and the indigenous languages of Taiwan belong to the vast vast Austronesian language family. This family is represented as far west as Madagascar off the coast of Africa and as far east as Chile's Easter Islands. Interestingly, the langauges of Madagascar and the Easter islands (belonging to the Malayo-Polynesian subbranch of the Austronesian family) are more closely related to one another than to the Austronesian languages of Taiwan.
219. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 3:47 PM PT
Message #217
"Both you and Diamond are laboring under the complete misapprehension that New Zealand Maoris were/are one culture and the Morioris were another. There were dozens of quite distinct 'Maori' cultures in New Zealand last century, signified by their tribal groupings."
No, you just don't know what's going on. Perhaps you should become a little more abreast of the goings-on in the thread. Diamond clearly has an anthropological understanding of "culture", one which is not coterminous with "tribe". To think "culture" and "tribe" the same thing is _your_ misapprehension.
According to Diamond, the Moriori were hunter-gatherers; the Maori on New Zealand were agriculturalists. The Maori had a hierarchical political organisation; the Moriori had an egalitarian social structure. They had very different tools and material cultures.
Do you dispute these stark differences?
220. FreetoChoose - March 3, 1999 - 3:47 PM PT
This is an aside to the main thrust of the book, but I was struck by Diamond's statement: “Stored food can also feed priests, who provide religious justification for wars of conquest…”
221. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 3:48 PM PT
"Moriori (who, after all, were simply another "Maori" tribe..."
That's the point of the chapter! They were the same people, adapted to different environments.
222. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 3:50 PM PT
Message #220: What's so surprising or unusual about that? One of several purposes religions everywhere served was to legitimise wars. Think of Popes and the Crusades. Or the jihad.
223. MrSocko - March 3, 1999 - 3:55 PM PT
"According to Diamond, the Moriori were hunter-gatherers; the Maori on New Zealand were agriculturalists. The Maori had a hierarchical political organisation; the Moriori had an egalitarian social structure. They had very different tools and material cultures."
Well, the first point is plain silly -- I assume you're confusing the two. The other points are inaccurate. I think you would find as many differences between various "New Zealand" tribes as you would between the Moriori and the others.
And I just don't know where Diamond gets the idea into his head that the Moriori were "egalitarian." Not even King would make such a daft claim. The ruling Moriori clan was the Solomon family.
224. FreetoChoose - March 3, 1999 - 3:57 PM PT
Msivorytower
I thought your post Message #198 was particularly apt.
In another thread, at another time, someone (it may have been me, but I don't recall) remarked that Gandhi's approach might have failed abysmally in Communist China. Without desiring to revisit that argument, you did say, “It illustrates how diplomacy and non-aggression only works when you and the enemy have some common goals and similar incentives.” You did not argue that diplomacy is always trumped by force; you indicated a set of circumstances under which it is more likely to work.
I also agree with PE that this is *your* observation of a lesson, and not the one that Diamond makes, but I think the purpose of a book discussion is to make such observations.
225. MrSocko - March 3, 1999 - 3:59 PM PT
Message #221
So how would Diamond explain away the fact that one Maori tribe might have practiced cannibalism while another bunch of guys living down the road didn't?
226. FreetoChoose - March 3, 1999 - 4:01 PM PT
Pseudoerasmus
I found the reference to the functions of priest neither surprising nor unusual. It largely conforms to my view of religion. However, I suspect that priests might be a bit unhappy, as this is the *only* function of priests I recall reading.
227. FreetoChoose - March 3, 1999 - 4:05 PM PT
MrSocko
Whatever might be the relevance? [of your canabalism comment]
And what, praytell, are we supposed to conclude about the egalitarian claim after learning that “[t]he ruling Moriori clan was the Solomon family”?
228. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 4:11 PM PT
Message #225
What is the relevance of cannibalism?
Message #223
Are you saying that the Maori on New Zealand were not agriculturalists, and that the Moriori on the Chathams were not hunter-gatherers?
If that's what you're saying, I simply don't believe you. You bleed misinformation out of your ass too often in the Fray to be credible in the least. You were just recently caught red-handed making up stories about how "aristocracy" was derived from "Aristotle".
As for egalitarianism, it does not preclude clans and chiefs. It merely precludes the complex hierarchy and economic inequality of multi-caste societies.
By the way, since Diamond remarks that the Maori on the North island of NZ were "chronically engaged in ferocious wars", he is obviously not under the misapprehension that these people were a united society.
229. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 4:14 PM PT
"Many larger islands never did become unified politically, whether because the population consisted of dispersed bands of only a few dozen hunter-gatherers each (the Chathams and New Zealand's southern South Island), or of farmers scattered over large distances (the rest of New Zealand)..."
Page 62
230. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 4:17 PM PT
Message #224
"In another thread, at another time, someone...remarked that Gandhi's approach might have failed abysmally in Communist China."
Ho Chi Minh (allegedly) once remarked, "If Mr Gandhi had been born in French Indochina, he would have met his Maker much earlier than he did.".
231. MrSocko - March 3, 1999 - 4:45 PM PT
Message #228, et al
For reasons given elsewhere, I haven't been able to obtain this book, so I make no judgment on it except to think that it's probably very good if so many people whose opinions I respect value it.
It is this Moriori business that annoys me. But perhaps I should explain this in American terms.
Let's suppose that last century there was a tribe of pacific Indians living in Nantucket (actually, I believe that was the case anyway...), and all along the eastern seaboard, from Maine to Florida, including the islands off the coasts of Georgia, Virginia, and Florida, there were dozens of other Indian tribes, many speaking different languages and having different customs and histories.
Let's suppose that a tribe from upstate New York travelled over to Nantucket and beat up all the inhabitants, a la the Morioris.
Would this tell us very much about anything, other than the immediate facts of the situation? Would it help in making useful distinctions between all Indians on the continent and this little island? I don't think so.
232. ScottLoar - March 3, 1999 - 5:02 PM PT
Socko and Pseudoerasmus, with all respect, I think this talk of the Maori has gotten well out of hand. It's distracting and does not advance the discussion. If you want to chew on something before reading the book Socko, try this one, "a hyena-like animal called the aardvark". Now, aardvark is to hyena as -- is to ---.
233. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 5:03 PM PT
Message #231
"Let's suppose that a tribe from upstate New York travelled over to Nantucket and beat up all the inhabitants, a la the Morioris."
But later on in the book, he makes this very comparison -- how some Indian tribes in North America developed advanced material cultures and subjugated the more primitive material cultures.
"Would it help in making useful distinctions between all Indians on the continent and this little island?"
As several of my quotations should make clear, he doesn't distinguish between the Chathams and all of New Zealand. He distinguishes between the Chathams and the tribes of North Island of New Zealand.
"Would this tell us very much about anything, other than the immediate facts of the situation?"
Depending on the circumstances, yes. Diamond didn't dredge up any old tribal conflict for the hell of it. He found what perfectly illustrated his thesis: how two peoples, descended from a common stock, evolved very different cultures in two very different environments. What's so objectionable about it?
234. ScottLoar - March 3, 1999 - 5:04 PM PT
The quote is ad verbum from page 116.
235. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 5:06 PM PT
Message #232
I agree. There wasn't very much to discuss in the Maori chapter anyway.
Any comments on chapter 4? I'm going to summarise chapters 5 and 6 tonight. I know many are anxious to get to the nitty gritty of why and where some societies became agricultural and not others.
236. msivorytower - March 3, 1999 - 5:12 PM PT
Yes, PE
But I just got out of class and need to head home. I hope to comment later this evening.
237. Msivorytower - March 3, 1999 - 7:27 PM PT
Excuse me, I was mistaken, the specific comments I wanted to make are related to later chapters.
I also see that PE started his discussion of this chapter with the very two lines I had marked as being the most critical.
I'll add my voice to the impression Diamonds analysis of priests and assorted non-producing classes made on my connecting all the information together. It's not so much that Diamond brings new information to the table for me, I knew much of what he discusses in these opening chapters, it's HOW he organizes the information to illustrate the interdependence and connectedness of what I had previously cataloged in my memory as fairly separate factors.
238. MrSocko - March 3, 1999 - 8:00 PM PT
This just in: I've located a bookstore here which has copies of the Diamond book. I shall purchase a copy tomorrow, and thereafter bedazzle all with my insights.
239. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 8:01 PM PT
PART TWO
The Rise and Spread of Food Production
CHAPTER FIVE
History's Haves and Have-Nots
[Note: All dates based on radiocarbon dating used in the Diamond book are "calibrated". That is, they are adjusted for the small systematic errors produced by the assumption of a constant carbon 14 / carbon 12 ratio of the atmosphere.]
Where did food production originate? When did it arise? And where and when was a given crop or animal domesticated?
Because domesticated animal and plant species differ morphologically from their wild ancestors and cousins, the remains of both can be easily recognised and distinguished in archaeological sites. After recognition and dating, one can decide whether those species were domesticated near the site, "rather than domesticated elsewhere and spread to the site", according to the geographical distribution of the species' wild ancestors. For example, although chickpeas (garbanzo beans) are grown domestically from the Mediterranean to the Indian subcontinent, the wild ancestor of the chickpea only grows in southeastern Turkey. Since, furthermore, the oldest archaeological remains of domesticated chickpeas have been found in southeastern Turkey and northern Syria, archaeologists therefore infer that the chickpea must have been domesticated in that region, around 8000 BC. In India, the oldest archaeological evidences of chickpeas appear only around 3000 BC.
In some cases, the same plant or animal was domesticated independently at several different sites. For example, because "genetic analyses show that the ancestors of modern [humped] Indian cattle and western Eurasian cattle breeds diverged from each other hundreds of thousands of years ago, long before any animals were domesticated anywhere", it is believed that cattle were domesticated independently in India and western Eurasia.
240. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 8:04 PM PT
CHAPTER FIVE
History's Haves and Have-Nots
[continued from Message #239
There are basically two models of the emergence of food production:
(1) Food production arises independently. Many local plants and animals are domesticated long before plants and animals domesticated elsewhere are imported. There are five regions of the world which fit this description, and four others whose status is uncertain.
(2) Food production emerges as a result of the importation of "founder" crops and animals from outside the region. Although the imports will stimulate some independent local domestication, the foundations -- the most important and staple crops and animals -- were laid by imported domesticates.
I hereby duplicate a table found in Diamond's book, concerning the locations and probable dates of domestication of various species.
An extreme case of (2) is whereby food production begins suddenly with the arrival in an area of a foreign people who bring with them their crops and animals. Such areas include California, the Pacific Northwest of North America, the Argentine pampas, Australia and Siberia. Some of these areas, particularly California and the Argentine pampas, happen to feature some of the most fertile soils in the world.
241. AzureNW - March 3, 1999 - 8:54 PM PT
Pseudoerasmus -
Re: Message #239
“Where did food production originate? When did it arise? And where and when was a given crop or animal domesticated?”
Diamond's purpose in asking these questions is to seek explanations for “the failure of food production to appear until modern times in some ecologically very suitable areas that are among the world's richest centers of agriculture and herding today.” It's one of those blunt questions that begets a nagging suspicion in many people that some groups of humans must be more capable of technological innovation than others. In chapter five, Diamond describes the methodology he uses to begin to answer the question , “Why did food production develop first in seemingly rather marginal lands, and only later in today's most fertile farmlands and pastures?”
242. AzureNW - March 3, 1999 - 8:57 PM PT
"It's one of those blunt questions that begets a nagging suspicion in many people that some groups of humans must be more capable of technological innovation than others."
e.g. Why didn't Native Americans ever invent the wheel?
243. CoralReef - March 3, 1999 - 9:06 PM PT
Azure, most civilizations according to Diamond didn't invent many critical things; what separated the successful civilizations by and large was that they had contact with others, and were able to import useful inventions. Native Americans and the groups of people in the Andes were unable to get the wheel that the Mesoamericans had invented, just as the Andeans had a domesticated llama that the Mesoamericans had no equivalent of. Geography played a role in that.
244. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 9:07 PM PT
Azure, my questions were rhetorical.
As for why food production emerged in some places but not in others, that's a question amply treated in later chapters, so I omitted Diamond's allusions to those questions from my summary of chapter 5.
245. ptboya - March 3, 1999 - 9:52 PM PT
Very good summaries PE.
I'm sooo sorry to've missed so much. Unfortunately, a piece of my life has been blown to smithereens and catching the bits and pieces as they fall back to earth is completely occupying my time.
I should have trademarked the term “cultural speciation” I guess.
The accidentally early development of some peoples based upon location, location, location…that is a big part of this book. The "right" crop(s)…particularly those which have a pleasing and dependable dominant trait, say sweetness, sets up a symbiosis between man and plant just as similar symbioses have evolved between particular insect species and plant species. The same symbiotic evolutionary cycle applies to the domestication of animals (the "right" animals) and the parallel to insects curiously also exists. I'm thinking of farmer ants which domesticate other insects as food producers.
The question of which preceeded which…sedentariness or agriculture has long been controversial. I lean to sedentariness (hah, also in real life). There is more and more evidence accumulating around the fertile crescent region that hunter-gatherers (H-G's) established a sedentary lifestyle before they switched their diets to agricultural sources. This is inferred by tooth abrasions, campfire remains, fecal fossils, etc, at what were apparantly proto-villages.
It has been established that the stature of these pioneering agriculturalists was fairly swiftly reduced by as much as 40%. The greatly reduced consumption of protein seems to have been the cause. This supports Diamond's assertion that the switch was not a conscious decision: unless one assumes that these new little people could have predicted they could outpopulate the larger H-G's whyever would they choose to be smaller? BTW, Americans, due to their high protein consumption, are now about the size of the last of the paleolithic H-G's.
246. ptboya - March 3, 1999 - 10:06 PM PT
Re: the spread of inventions.
Many inventions only occurred once and then spread. And geography naturally is an important factor in this spread. Natural barriers in the region of New Guinea where I spent some time were obvious reasons for the existence of so many languages in such a small area.
The spread of crop culture and domestication of animals is even more bound by geography. If a continent is aligned on a N-S axis, then even a short distance may span several botanical zones. Many plants cannot survive in more than a few zones. The same is true of animal species. Eurasia has the dumb luck of being on an E-W axis where the spread of species is facilitated… not true of Africa, NA, SA.
247. Pseudoerasmus - March 3, 1999 - 10:14 PM PT
ptboya: good posts, but ease up on the fast-forwarding.
248. PincherMartin - March 4, 1999 - 1:18 AM PT
PseudoErasmus --
Great Start.
Diamond's book does not contradict the cultural explanations of many histories (such as Landes' book). It is a fascinating thesis for why the peoples of Eurasia were dominant in their contacts with Native Americans, Black Africans, and Australian Aborigines (among others). His approach, I think, would not be so successful in explaining the rise of Germany in the last century or why Japan was the first non-western country to modernize. In that sense, he and Landes are complementary rather than opposed. Some here have already mentioned this; I think it important to reiterate it.
I think Diamond's book is brilliant. One of the best I have read in a long time. His command of several areas of scholarship and his experience in the field give many of his arguments a compelling logic even when I think he stretches them.
249. PincherMartin - March 4, 1999 - 1:26 AM PT
Cultural explanations can be terribly abused, even by scholars who have no ulterior motives such as proving the superiority of one race over another. Until recently, Confucianism was blamed by many to be the reason why China was backward (for example, the low rank of the merchant in the Confucian world-view), but after many overseas Chinese communities began to thrive economically, Confucianism became an important reason for why they were successful. This to me proves the adaptability of scholars more than Confucianism's adaptability.
250. PincherMartin - March 4, 1999 - 1:40 AM PT
MsIT -- Message #26
"There is also something very satisfying about Diamond's approach because it IS really, really broad. It's sweeping in its range and scope, and he effectively demonstrates that other explanations for the rise of inequalities between societies MUST be subsumed within this larger vision."
I don't agree. I think Diamond proves that the dominance of the peoples of Eurasia in their clashes with the peoples of Africa, North and South America, and Australia was not cultural. Other explanations for the "inequalities of socities" may or may not have merit depending on their scope.
"Wrt the cultural explanation for why wealth and power is distributed unevenly throughout the world, Diamond repeatedly shows how the introduction of better crops and livestock into areas where they were not native were quickly adopted by any and all cultures given the opportunity. But that is for later discussion, I only note it here to indicate how Diamond confronts the cultural barriers explanations for inequalities."
Actually, I think Diamond specifically says in more than one part that some cultures did seem resistant to new ideas and new ways of doing things for no reason other than their culture didn't like the new way. Again, Diamond does not say that cultural explanantions are bunk; he seems to argue that in the broadest scope they are completely unimportant in explaining why the people of Eurasia advanced further and faster than the people elsewhere.
251. PincherMartin - March 4, 1999 - 1:42 AM PT
MsIT -- Message #27
Ignore the above post since I hadn't read this:
"He addresses them and marginalizes them as important to explain anything, although he does acknowledge that cultural resistance to change may help explain some short term outcomes."
252. PincherMartin - March 4, 1999 - 1:48 AM PT
"45. jayackroyd - March 1, 1999 - 8:54 AM PT
McNeill's response to Jared's summary is disappointing. A simple reiteration, with no extension of the argument, but with a crankier tone."
I was also disappointed with McNeill's response. Especially since Diamond acknowledged the importance of culture when looking at a narrower range of history than he had done.
253. PincherMartin - March 4, 1999 - 1:55 AM PT
PseudoErasmus -- Message #54
"Also, once you realise that these differeneces in "cultural endowments", whether Confucianism or Protestantism or whatever, are results of adaptation to environment, anyone trying to get chauvinistic mileage out of the cultural theory is effectively deflated."
This seems to be brutally reductive. I would think that at least modern man has some control over both the enviroment and the culture that he surrounds himself with, and that these choices are not strictly an enviromental adaptation.
254. PincherMartin - March 4, 1999 - 2:17 AM PT
Diamond helps me to understand why some of the dating of Clovis sites that were in the papers are off-base. I had read that some site was found that showed Native Americans had been here twenty thousand years earlier than was previously thought. There have been other large discrepancies that I have read about. Diamond explains how this happens with the contamination of some sites. I is an interesting explanation and convincing.
Less convincing is Diamond's explanation of the disappearance of large game animals in Australia/New Guinea and North/South America and therefore the lack of suitable candidates for domestication. All of the species he mentioned in the first case -- a huge python, a large crocodile, etc. did not seem likely species for domestication. He also says that the evolution of these animals in an enviroment without man left them vulnerable once man arrived I agree with this, but so what. Wouldn't one of the prerequisites for domestication be that man could capture a species and attempt to tame it first before he could domesticate it? It seems that if the large mammals in the Americas were so vulnerable to man that he killed many of them off, that the candidates for domestication would have been just as easy to capture, tame and then domesticate.
255. PincherMartin - March 4, 1999 - 2:31 AM PT
Little Lambkins, PseudoErasmus --
"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."
Actually, I think Little Lambkins is right on this one, and in one of the back chapters of _Guns, Germs, and Steel_, Diamond makes an oblique reference to this subject. As the people of South China were pushed out by the Chinese moving south, they first went to Taiwan and then went on to populate the other islands, including New Zealand. I don't have the book handy right now, but someone with the book and its index can probably find the section I am talking about. I may have some of the details wrong , but the gist is right.
As usual, Little Lambkins is the sage of the North Island.
256. uzmakk - March 4, 1999 - 4:00 AM PT
Just checking in, Pseudo. I am "reading". Good stuff.
257. ptboya - March 4, 1999 - 4:35 AM PT
ptboya: good posts, but ease up on the fast-forwarding.
I'm currently only on Chap. 7. Though, some of my thinking is influenced by Diamond's previous book, "The Third Chimpanzee." Perhaps he's recycling some ideas in this book?
258. RyckNelson - March 4, 1999 - 5:08 AM PT
This is from a post Azure made;
"It's one of those blunt questions that begets a nagging suspicion in many people that some groups of humans must be more capable of technological innovation than others. In chapter five, Diamond describes the methodology he uses to begin to answer the question , “Why did food production develop first in seemingly rather marginal lands, and only later in today's most fertile farmlands and pastures?”"
this portion of the post is a question for speculating. it seems to me that the european and asian populations which dominated came from areas that may have had pretty excellent soil. the euphrates river, the nile river, and china has so many. but, what of the mongols and turks. the mongols i don't think ever had a geographic advantage of any kind. they just had one hell of a good fighting method, horseback. the turks or ottomans i don't know geographically what kind of soil they have. i know the east is very mountainous and the west is abutting the mediteranian so i suppose that part must have been quite good. and i think PE's table showed turk cultivation. but all of this is leading to what i'm thinking is their civilizations dominance.
that dominance seems to have occured because of an innovation. ie, the horse, gunpowder, architecture, professional armies and navies or what have you. i have an idea that the some peoples who had more than their fair share of innovations had the technology of defensive architecture first. the great wall, the castles of europe and north africa the temples and large fortresses. look at what the europeans did all over the plains of america. they built forts for protection and centralized control. that ties into the aforementioned leader class that arose and created the political structure. which in turn created a support base that eventually included priests. priests by the way sometimes give me the creeps.
aside;
it seems to me priests have been of an overwhelming
259. RyckNelson - March 4, 1999 - 5:11 AM PT
aside;
it seems to me priests have been of an overwhelming evil influence in history. the blood bath in Spain the sacrifices in mesoamerica, the creation of man made rules for life that are gifts and supported by the god they claim to be following. it's all very evil and contrived.
well anyway the point and information i want to speculate upon is that the architecture of a people is what supported innovation. because the people had a safe place to innovate within. if they had to work hard for their safety then what time would they have to innovate anything? or in contrast if they had no fear what motivation did they have? i think a lot of innovations stemmed from military need, did they not?
260. RyckNelson - March 4, 1999 - 5:17 AM PT
oops the great wall doesn't exactly fit very well in my post above. but it's an example of architecture from a settled people who were using lots of walls to protect and centralize.
again,
the point is in the last,
"what i want to speculate upon is that the architecture of a people is what supported innovation. because the people had a safe place to innovate within. if they had to work hard for their safety then what time would they have to innovate anything? or in contrast if they had no fear what motivation did they have? i think a lot of innovations stemmed from military need, did they not?"
261. RyckNelson - March 4, 1999 - 5:18 AM PT
also, if the turks had good soil in the west abutting the mediteranian then, they most likely still do.
262. RyckNelson - March 4, 1999 - 5:26 AM PT
tmachine,
the mounds people perceived by many to be some lost tribes i have specualted to have moved. it may have been from environmental forces or maybe from usurping peoples they wished to esape. i think the scattered to mesoamerica and also became the pueblo people of the southwest. they obviously had some idea that building or architecture was an advantage to their life so perhaps my speculation is correct. looking to the futures of pueblo culture and mesoamerican cultures. their building became most expansive. perhaps i'm right, but i've no resource for proof nor resource to check and gather proof.
an environmental factor that may have destroyed the mound culture could have been a few wild seasons of tornados, or perhaps the last ice age did them in. that last should be quantitative to some degree, i wonder if it's ever been tried?
263. pellenilsson - March 4, 1999 - 5:28 AM PT
Ryck
There weren't any Turks in Turkey during the period we are discussing.
Have you noticed the keys at both extremes of the key board with sort of fat up-arrows on them? They are called shift keys. A lot of people use them to make their sentences more legible.
264. ptboya - March 4, 1999 - 5:35 AM PT
"It seems that if the large mammals in the Americas were so vulnerable to man that he killed many of them off, that the candidates for domestication would have been just as easy to capture, tame and then domesticate."
The problem seems to have been that the hunter-gatherers who came to the Americas did not bring with them the *concept* of domestication of animals. And in the blink of an evolutionary eye the large mammals were gone before this concept did develop.
Game was plentiful and was taken swiftly with no concern for replenishment. Once an area was depleted the hunters simply moved on to the next. The New World Blitzkrieg hypothesis is based on the startling fact that NA and SA lost 73% and 80% of their genera of big mammals around the time of the spread of humans from Canada all the way to Tierra Del Fuego… within close to 1000 years. It is reckoned by applying historically known rates of humans pioneering new found land (Pitcairn, e.g. where pop. growth was 3.4%/year) that within a millenium the pop. of NA/SA could easily have grown to 10 million. This breeding rate quickly increased the kill rate of the existing species so that it became greater than the reproductive replacement rate.
Competing theories are climate based, but the types of climatological upheaval which occured during this period was really no different than previous cycles the same mammals had survived.
265. RyckNelson - March 4, 1999 - 5:55 AM PT
Pelle,
in the sense you say it yes i know the keys exist. whether to use or not to use that is the question?
i don't consider the lack of use to be misuse, yet you do. it's not exactly that i don't desire to make the post easy to read it's that i desire expediency and i have enough to do just to spell correctly and to get my point across semi-coherently. any old timer here will rib me about it.
also the pesky pain i get while typing means i want it over with fast.
266. ptboya - March 4, 1999 - 5:58 AM PT
Ryck…
I think it's necessary to focus more on the great switch to agriculture which preceeded the formation of armies by centuries. Why, how, and when did particular areas and only those areas develop into agriculturally based cultures abandoning their hunter-gatherer roots.
The advantage of cavalry which you cite is a very late spin-off of agriculture. The farmers of Europe had been there for thousands of years before the arrival of the Proto-Indo-Europeans (PIE's) with their modern innovations… the horse, plows, wheels. The sorts of question to focus on here are: where, why, how, and when did the PIE's develop these technologies from the base of agriculture? And when did they make the switch to agriculture in the first place?
267. Pseudoerasmus - March 4, 1999 - 7:07 AM PT
Message #253
Only in the short term. I intend to discuss this at grater length in the chapter on "How China became Chinese". It will be good to keep in mind my Message #54.
268. Pseudoerasmus - March 4, 1999 - 7:17 AM PT
Message #248
"Diamond's book does not contradict the cultural explanations of many histories (such as Landes' book). It is a fascinating thesis for why the peoples of Eurasia were dominant in their contacts with Native Americans, Black Africans, and Australian Aborigines (among others)."
I believe I tried to stress this at some length. The best way to look at cultural explanations is to treat them as short-term phenomena (i.e., a matter of centuries, rather than millennia).
269. pellenilsson - March 4, 1999 - 7:32 AM PT
ptboya Message #266
Proto-Indo-Europeans? Please clarify. Who? Where? When? What criterion for advancing from Proto to the real thing?
If these questions are addressed and answered by Diamond, please disregard. I have ordered the book and expect delivery within the next few days.
270. Pseudoerasmus - March 4, 1999 - 7:38 AM PT
Message #269
"Proto-Indo-European" is the conventional term used by archaeologists and linguists to refer to the reconstructed language and culture of the earliest IE peoples. Also by recreating their "protolexicon", it should be possible, in the view of these scholars, to construct some sort of picture of the world of these people and of their environment before their supposed dispersal from their Urheimat, their Ur-homeland.
An example of a reconstruction is to take the word for "birch" in several langauges -- the German Birke, the Slavonic breza, and the Sanskrit bhurja -- and postulate that in PIE it was "bhergh". I've always thought it something of a lunatic endeavour, but there it is.
271. ptboya - March 4, 1999 - 7:51 AM PT
Pelle…
Since I've not finished the "Guns…" book I don't know if he touches on the spread of the Indo-Europeans. He covers this quite extensively in his previous book ("The Third Chimpanzee") which I highly recommend.
272. Pseudoerasmus - March 4, 1999 - 7:57 AM PT
No, the IE migrations are not really covred in the book, except to compare the histories of Eurasia and the Americas.
273. pellenilsson - March 4, 1999 - 8:03 AM PT
PE
"... postulate that in PIE it was "bhergh"."... "lunatic endeavour ...". Yes. Add to this that (a) the Swedish, and, I suspect, Norse word, 'berg' means 'mountain', and that the birch tree is the one that survives at the highest altitude, and you have the stuff for a dissertation (have I overdone the commas in this sentence?)
But I'm digressing. Having recently appeared as the Great Digressor in two other threads, while simultaneously suffering from pathological topicality, I'm torn apart mentally and emotionally. Please put me back on track with one of your admirable summaries (provisional judgement, haven't read the book yet).
274. ptboya - March 4, 1999 - 8:08 AM PT
The recently proposed theory that the Mediterranean overflowed into the Black Sea about 5000 years ago might propel research about Proto-Indo-Europeans (PIE's) in many new directions. The theory, if true, and there is a growing body of evidence to support it, holds that this flooding substantially expanded what had previously been a fresh water lake of already considerable size. The farmers (this area is considered to be the Ur-homeland of the PIE's) working the shorelands of this lake were forced to quickly migrate. This may account for the rapid spread of agriculture into surrounding areas around this time, especially westward. If shoreline communities were submeged in this process there are probably well preserved specimens from the era still submerged and waiting to be discovered by undersea archeologists.
275. pellenilsson - March 4, 1999 - 8:28 AM PT
ptboya
Could you provide a brief biography of Jared Diamond? I've seen several reviews of Guns .... but that was the first time I heard of him.
276. Pseudoerasmus - March 4, 1999 - 8:37 AM PT
Jared Diamond, Professor of Physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine, "began his scientific career in physiology and expanded into evolutionary biology and biogeography. Because of his speciality, bird evolution, he has spent much time in New Guinea, where he developed the love and admiration for the indigenous Fore people which shows through our present book. Which itself was prompted by a question posed by one New Guinea, Yali: "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?"
277. Pseudoerasmus - March 4, 1999 - 8:39 AM PT
There should be a close quotation mark after "biogeography" in Message #276.
His two previous books are "The Third Chimpanzee", which I don't think is nearly as good as the current one; and "Why is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality", which is better but downright repetitive if you've read any evolutionary pscyhology.
278. NickVanston - March 4, 1999 - 9:49 AM PT
Perhaps an important element in the relative success of the Euro-asians has been a propensity to organise? Over the period that records exist, it is fairly clear that organised groups of people have usually been more successful both in holding on to what they have, and taking what others have, than disorganised groups, even when they were outnumbered numerically. Presumably the same was true in pre-history. Maybe the proto-IEs were genetically predisposed to organise themselves, or perhaps their environment was such that survival was difficult for small scattered groups without a hierarchical structure.
279. msivorytower - March 4, 1999 - 10:01 AM PT
Vanston
I believe Diamond sees the incentives to develop hierarchies as intimately tied to the development of food production, which leads to more sedentary communities, which eventually leads to giving up hunting-gathering altogether for food production, which leads to the ability to create surpluses.
I say ability to create surpluses, since as Diamond points out, when one lives the H-G lifestyle there is very little ability to store food, even that which is gathered, because it requires guarding it, or burying it (which requires storage containers that will keep the food from decaying). So the incentives for creating surplus are minimal for H-G's, but not so for those communities that become more sedentary. Once a community has begun storing and accumulating significant surpluses, the ability for that community to maintain support for a class of non-producers grows, and hence, the incentives for some in that community to take control and establish themselves as rulers who "take" a portion of the surplus for their own maintainance. Once that happens, the system builds upon itself, the ruler is more apt to develop protection to maintain his power, to develop a class of individuals that help maintain his power in the community. And on it goes.
So, my point is that I don't think a propensity to organize orginates in culture, it originates in environmental opportunities.
280. elliot803 - March 4, 1999 - 10:04 AM PT
NickVanston:
I don't think there's any evidence that any group of human beings has a greater "genetic disposition to organize" than any other group.
281. msivorytower - March 4, 1999 - 10:06 AM PT
Yes, I should have included genetic in my last comment above as well.
Neither culture OR genetic orgins to a propensity to organize by some over others.
282. ScottLoar - March 4, 1999 - 11:10 AM PT
re Message #279: Hunter-gatherers highly value containers which allow the storage or serving of food. A big trade item to hunter-gatherers in Southeast Asia was Chinese porcelain plates and containers, the larger the better. To this day antique dealers scrounge the hinterlands of Borneo to find those porcelains yet in use like the big, communal eating plates, some of which date back to the Sung Dynasty. Common trade items to early North America were steel knives and axheads; guns; copper, German silver, and glass beads; and iron cooking pots.
283. msivorytower - March 4, 1999 - 11:19 AM PT
Scott
Oh assuredly, but Diamond makes the comment somewhere that the ability to carry large amounts of surplus was limited for H-G communities. The containers they carried couldn't hold a significant amount of surplus, and that is the main point. No accumulation of surplus could easily occur in H-G communities, particularly highly mobile ones.
284. ScottLoar - March 4, 1999 - 11:24 AM PT
Yes, of course they are mobile and cannot store or carry large amounts of surplus, and realizing their limitations hunter-gatherers place a premium on containers like those Sung dynasty porcelains. No contradictions there.
285. PincherMartin - March 4, 1999 - 2:03 PM PT
PTBoya -- Message #264
"The problem seems to have been that the hunter-gatherers who came to the Americas did not bring with them the *concept* of domestication of animals. And in the blink of an evolutionary eye the large mammals were gone before this concept did develop."
I am not saying this didn't happen; I just don't think Diamond's evidence proves it. The animals he mentions that did disappear were not likely to be domesticated.
"Game was plentiful and was taken swiftly with no concern for replenishment. Once an area was depleted the hunters simply moved on to the next. The New World Blitzkrieg hypothesis is based on the startling fact that NA and SA lost 73% and 80% of their genera of big mammals around the time of the spread of humans from Canada all the way to Tierra Del Fuego… within close to 1000 years. It is reckoned
by applying historically known rates of humans pioneering new found land (Pitcairn, e.g. where pop. growth was 3.4%/year) that within a millenium the pop. of NA/SA could easily have grown to 10 million. This breeding rate quickly increased the kill rate of the existing species so that it became greater than the reproductive replacement rate."
Very interesting statistics. Among the 73% to 80%, were there likely candidates for domestication (cousins to the horses, pigs, goats, cows, sheep, buffalos, etc. that formed the basis for domestication in Eurasia)that were exterminated? Wooly mammoths, giant pythons, saber-tooth tigers, giant sloths and lemurs, giant crocodiles, pygmy hippos, etc were not likely to be the basis for a domesticated species, and yet Diamond mentions most of these in his argument for why certain areas lacked the species for domestication. Better proof would have been to give examples of species that actually had a chance to be domesticated.
286. PincherMartin - March 4, 1999 - 2:03 PM PT
...continued
"Competing theories are climate based, but the types of climatological upheaval which occured during this period was really no different than previous cycles the same mammals had survived."
I am not advancing an alternate theory. Diamond's thesis is interesting, and it may be true, but I think it needs to be fleshed out further.
287. ptboya - March 4, 1999 - 4:05 PM PT
Diamond expended a lot more ink on the New World Blitzkrieg Hypothesis in his previous book, "The Third Chimpanzee." His main sources are: Paul Martin, "The Discovery of America,"Science 179 and; Mosimann & Martin, "Simulating Overkill By Paleoindians," American Scientist 63. The latter is a mathematical modeling of the theory.
Loar…
"Better proof would have been to give examples of species that actually had a chance to be domesticated."
Excellent question. Here's a list from "The Third Chimpanzee."
Elephantlike mammoths and mastodonts
Ground sloths (weighing up to 3 tons)
Armadillolike glyptodonts (weighing up to 1 ton)
Bear-sized beavers
Sabertooth cats
American lions
Cheetahs
Camels
Horses
and many others.
I know the horses were much smaller than those in the old world. I don't know about the camels. As for the rest, with the exception of the pachyderms, they hardly seem candidates for domestication.
288. ptboya - March 4, 1999 - 4:11 PM PT
The comparison of present day H-G's with those pre-agricultural H-G's is very risky. Even those historically known H-G's had already been influenced by agriculturalists. Their desire for large containers, and most other goods, probably arose out of contact with agriculturalists and did not exist before then.
289. PincherMartin - March 4, 1999 - 4:34 PM PT
PTBoya -- Message #287
"Loar…
"Better proof would have been to give examples of species that actually had a chance to be domesticated."
I think this was my quote, not Loar's. Thanks for the list which supports my guess that most of the extinct species had very little chance for domestication.
290. Msivorytower - March 4, 1999 - 4:43 PM PT
PincherM
I don't see your point. Most of the list of large animals ANYWHERE were not candidates for domestication. Diamond goes through this exhaustively.
291. PincherMartin - March 4, 1999 - 4:56 PM PT
MsIt --
Yes, I know that Diamond says that only a small percentage of large mammals are suitable for domestication (he gives some characteristics of them in the book), but why didn't he mention the species that had a chance to be domesticated rather than the many that did not? (McNeill in his review asks why Native Americans didn't domesticate the American Buffalo.) I think he glosses over this too quickly. The characteristics that he ascribes to the large mammals that didn't co-evolve with man are a good reason why could have been slaughtered; they also seem a good reason why man could have easily captured, tamed and then domesticated them.
292. Pseudoerasmus - March 4, 1999 - 5:00 PM PT
I don't mean to bitch, but isn't the point of having a group reading thread to go along with the collective reading plan??? Boya rather wildly hops from one part of the book to another, as does MartinPincher. Let us not get ahead of ourselves. I'm sure you all have opinions bursting to come out, but there are plenty of people reading this thread who have not read ahead or who haven't managed to get a copy of the book. So try to confine your opinions to those chapters which have already been summarised. I will try to finish up chapters 6 to 10 before next week, since those topics have not burst out like gusts of water out of a dam.
293. Pseudoerasmus - March 4, 1999 - 5:04 PM PT
PincherMartin's criticism, especially where it borrows from William McNeill, is a good one. But I think the biggest weakness of Diamond's theory has to do with technological diffusion, which has much fewer obstacles than crop diffusion. But that's later too.
294. PincherMartin - March 4, 1999 - 5:15 PM PT
My apologies Pseudo. I gave the book to a friend (I have reordered a second copy through Amazon which will arrive tomorrow)and so I am unable to follow along closely or quote directly from the book.
I did think that my comments, with the exception of one, where within the limits of what has already been read up til now.
295. AzureNW - March 4, 1999 - 5:37 PM PT
Are we talking about chapter six yet?
Chapter six lays out an argument concerning how societies weigh the relative costs and benefits of hunting-gathering vs. food-producing economies. Diamond's careful analysis of the options involved in each and his easy, narrative style of writing makes the hunter-gatherers seem very human and real rather than primitive and not quite human the way they are often portrayed, by showing the reasoning behind the choice of hunting-gathering lifestyles.
296. DaveCook - March 4, 1999 - 5:54 PM PT
First of all kudos to Raz for his dilligent effort and terrific insights into Diamond's very good book. Other contributors, good posts/entertaining thread.
I enjoyed reading Diamond's book. Though I am not terribly interested in anthropology or pre-history, I found it chock full of neat little giblets of information. I had always wondered why the Indians didn't give Europeans any major diseases. Also, I have seen the wild ancestor of corn and wondered how some non-literate caveman got the idea of genetically altering that into its modern variety. Diamond's book has very believable answers to both questions.
297. DaveCook - March 4, 1999 - 6:09 PM PT
My first comments are on what this book is not about. Its not about Guns, or Steel and its only marginally about Germs. It is about the relative technological advance of agricultural societies. [I guess Pigs, Rye, and Germs wasn't as sexy a title].
Nor (thankfully), as pointed out by Pseudoerasmus, is this book about the relative genetic quality of the various races of people. When I read JD's 1 sentence description of his book in the prologue, which described it as such, I nearly stopped reading. I really don't want to spend any of my life reading some social scientist describing which races are more or less intelligent, given that their is no actual genetic evidence that any are. Further, Diamond's patronizing assertion that New Guineans have genetically evolved faster than Eurasians based on the particular rigors of their environment undercuts his argument. Any racist clever enough to read Diamond's book (and contrary to PE there are plenty) is clever enough to invert that argument.
298. DaveCook - March 4, 1999 - 6:21 PM PT
Second, this book does not answer the question "Why are some peoples rich and some people poor." Technological advances in agricultural societies before 1500 did not lead to greater wealth for their members. They just lead to increases in population. Advancing ag technology does mean increasing relative political power for the cultures that possess it (a greater % of specialized soldiers and more people). But economic welfare, not really.
Comparing modern Spain with modern Peru, Spaniards have a much higher per capita income. However, this is a recent phenomenon based on the industrial revolution. It is likely that at the time of Pizarro that the average Spanish peon had a living standard roughly comparable with the average Incan peasent. Further, the modern Peruvian has a living standard that favorably compares with most of the people in Eurasia.
299. ptboya - March 4, 1999 - 6:23 PM PT
"Boya rather wildly hops from one part of the book to another…"
This is the second time you've made this comment. I repeat, I've only just reached the middle of Chap. 7. I apologize if I anticipate some of his later exposition, but I am familiar with his prior works and a fair amount of the genre. My mind does not treat this subject linearly. If you'd prefer I'll just happily observe.
300. DaveCook - March 4, 1999 - 6:31 PM PT
Its been said that Diamonds' book is thus complementary to books like Landes' "Wealth and ...". It is true that these books are about different subjects. However, given the unique historical nature of the Industrial Revolution, its not clear that Diamond's book informs us about Landes' subject very much at all. Granted, its unlikely that the Industrial Revolution could have taken place in the New Guinea highlands of 1750 because of the low level of agricultural technology. However, beyond that, I would argue that the development of an economy based on machines and technical tools is comparable to the change from hunting and gathering to agriculture. This change deserves its own explanation and is much less likely to depend on some sort of geographical determinsim than agriculture (for obvious reasons).