• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
Why Did Human History Unfold Differently On DifferentContinents For The Last 13,000 Years?
 A Talk By Jared Diamond 
 
 Introduction by John Brockman </3rd_culture/bios/brockman.html>
 The biggest question that Jared Diamond is asking himself is how to turn the study of history into ascience. He notes the distinction between the "hard sciences" such as physics, biology, and astronomy -and what we sometimes call the "social sciences," which includes history, economics, government. Thesocial sciences are often thought of as a pejorative. In particular many of the so-called hard scientistssuch as physicists or biologists, don't consider history to be a science. The situation is even moreextreme because, he points out, even historians themselves don't consider history to be a science.Historians don't get training in the scientific methods; they don't get training in statistics; they don't gettraining in the experimental method or problems of doing experiments on historical subjects; and they'lloften say that history is not a science, history is closer to an art.Jared comes to this question as one who is accomplished in two scientific areas: physiology andevolutionary biology. The first is a laboratory science; the second, is never far from history. "Biology isthe science," he says. "Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique."In his new theories of human development, he brings together history and biology in presenting a globalaccount of the rise of civilization. In so doing he takes on race-based theories of human development."Most people are explicitly racists," he says. "In parts of the world - so called educated, so-calledwestern society - we've learned that it is not polite to be racist, and so often we don't express racistviews, but nevertheless I've given lectures on this subject, and members of the National Academy of Sciences come up to me afterwards and say, but native Australians, they're so primitive. Racism is one of the big issues in the world today. Racism is the big social problem in the United States."So why are people racists? According to Jared, racism involves the belief that other people are notcapable of being educated. Or being human - that they're different from us, and they're less than human.It was through his work in New Guinea for the last 30 years that convinced him that it's not true. "'They'are smarter than we are," he says. But perhaps the main reason why people resort to racist explanations,he notes, is that they don't have another answer. Until there's a convincing answer why history reallytook the course that it did, people are going to fall back on the racist explanation. Jared believes that the big world impact of his ideas may being in demolishing the basis for racist theories of history and racistviews.
Why Did Human History Unfold Differently On DifferentContinents For The Last 13,000 Years?
A Talk By Jared Diamond
I've set myself the modest task of trying to explain the broad pattern of human history, on all thecontinents, for the last 13,000 years. Why did history take such different evolutionary courses for 
 
 peoples of different continents? This problem has fascinated me for a long time, but it's now ripe for anew synthesis because of recent advances in many fields seemingly remote from history, includingmolecular biology, plant and animal genetics and biogeography, archaeology, and linguistics.As we all know, Eurasians, especially peoples of Europe and eastern Asia, have spread around the globe,to dominate the modern world in wealth and power. Other peoples, including most Africans, survived,and have thrown off European domination but remain behind in wealth and power. Still other peoples,including the original inhabitants of Australia, the Americas, and southern Africa, are no longer evenmasters of their own lands but have been decimated, subjugated, or exterminated by Europeancolonialists. Why did history turn out that way, instead of the opposite way? Why weren't NativeAmericans, Africans, and Aboriginal Australians the ones who conquered or exterminated Europeansand Asians?This big question can easily be pushed back one step further. By the year A.D. 1500, the approximateyear when Europe's overseas expansion was just beginning, peoples of the different continents alreadydiffered greatly in technology and political organization. Much of Eurasia and North Africa wasoccupied then by Iron Age states and empires, some of them on the verge of industrialization. Two Native American peoples, the Incas and Aztecs, ruled over empires with stone tools and were juststarting to experiment with bronze. Parts of sub-Saharan Africa were divided among small indigenousIron Age states or chiefdoms. But all peoples of Australia, New Guinea, and the Pacific islands, andmany peoples of the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa, were still living as farmers or even still as hunter/gatherers with stone tools.Obviously, those differences as of A.D. 1500 were the immediate cause of the modern world'sinequalities. Empires with iron tools conquered or exterminated tribes with stone tools. But how did theworld evolve to be the way that it was in the year A.D. 1500?This question, too can be easily pushed back a further step, with the help of written histories andarchaeological discoveries. Until the end of the last Ice Age around 11,000 B.C., all humans on allcontinents were still living as Stone Age hunter/gatherers. Different rates of development on differentcontinents, from 11,000 B.C. to A.D. 1500, were what produced the inequalities of A.D. 1500. WhileAboriginal Australians and many Native American peoples remained Stone Age hunter/gatherers, mostEurasian peoples, and many peoples of the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa, gradually developedagriculture, herding, metallurgy, and complex political organization. Parts of Eurasia, and one small areaof the Americas, developed indigenous writing as well. But each of these new developments appearedearlier in Eurasia than elsewhere.So, we can finally rephrase our question about the evolution of the modern world's inequalities asfollows. Why did human development proceed at such different rates on different continents for the last13,000 years? Those differing rates constitute the broadest pattern of history, the biggest unsolved problem of history, and my subject today.Historians tend to avoid this subject like the plague, because of its apparently racist overtones. Many people, or even most people, assume that the answer involves biological differences in average IQamong the world's populations, despite the fact that there is no evidence for the existence of such IQdifferences. Even to ask the question why different peoples had different histories strikes some of us asevil, because it appears to be justifying what happened in history. In fact, we study the injustices of history for the same reason that we study genocide, and for the same reason that psychologists study theminds of murderers and rapists: not in order to justify history, genocide, murder, and rape, but instead tounderstand how those evil things came about, and then to use that understanding so as to prevent their happening again. In case the stink of racism still makes you feel uncomfortable about exploring thissubject, just reflect on the underlying reason why so many people accept racist explanations of history's broad pattern: we don't have a convincing alternative explanation. Until we do, people will continue togravitate by default to racist theories. That leaves us with a huge moral gap, which constitutes thestrongest reason for tackling this uncomfortable subject.Let's proceed continent-by-continent. As our first continental comparison, let's consider the collision of 
 
the Old World and the New World that began with Christopher Columbus's voyage in A.D. 1492, because the proximate factors involved in that outcome are well understood. I'll now give you asummary and interpretation of the histories of North America, South America, Europe, and Asia frommy perspective as a biogeographer and evolutionary biologist - all that in ten minutes; 2_ minutes per continent. Here we go:Most of us are familiar with the stories of how a few hundred Spaniards under Cortés and Pizarrooverthrew the Aztec and Inca Empires. The populations of each of those empires numbered tens of millions. We're also familiar with the gruesome details of how other Europeans conquered other parts of the New World. The result is that Europeans came to settle and dominate most of the New World, whilethe Native American population declined drastically from its level as of A.D. 1492. Why did it happenthat way? Why didn't it instead happen that the Emperors Montezuma or Atahuallpa led the Aztecs or Incas to conquer Europe?The proximate reasons are obvious. Invading Europeans had steel swords, guns, and horses, while Native Americans had only stone and wooden weapons and no animals that could be ridden. Thosemilitary advantages repeatedly enabled troops of a few dozen mounted Spaniards to defeat Indian armiesnumbering in the thousands. Nevertheless, steel swords, guns, and horses weren't the sole proximate factors behind the Europeanconquest of the New World. Infectious diseases introduced with Europeans, like smallpox and measles,spread from one Indian tribe to another, far in advance of Europeans themselves, and killed an estimated95% of the New World's Indian population. Those diseases were endemic in Europe, and Europeans hadhad time to develop both genetic and immune resistance to them, but Indians initially had no suchresistance. That role played by infectious diseases in the European conquest of the New World wasduplicated in many other parts of the world, including Aboriginal Australia, southern Africa, and manyPacific islands.Finally, there is still another set of proximate factors to consider. How is it that Pizarro and Cortésreached the New World at all, before Aztec and Inca conquistadors could reach Europe? That outcomedepended partly on technology in the form of oceangoing ships. Europeans had such ships, while theAztecs and Incas did not. Also, those European ships were backed by the centralized politicalorganization that enabled Spain and other European countries to build and staff the ships. Equallycrucial was the role of European writing in permitting the quick spread of accurate detailed information,including maps, sailing directions, and accounts by earlier explorers, back to Europe, to motivate later explorers.So far, we've identified a series of proximate factors behind European colonization of the New World:namely, ships, political organization, and writing that brought Europeans to the New World; Europeangerms that killed most Indians before they could reach the battlefield; and guns, steel swords, and horsesthat gave Europeans a big advantage on the battlefield. Now, let's try to push the chain of causation back further. Why did these proximate advantages go to the Old World rather than to the New World?Theoretically, Native Americans might have been the ones to develop steel swords and guns first, todevelop oceangoing ships and empires and writing first, to be mounted on domestic animals moreterrifying than horses, and to bear germs worse than smallpox.The part of that question that's easiest to answer concerns the reasons why Eurasia evolved the nastiestgerms. It's striking that Native Americans evolved no devastating epidemic diseases to give toEuropeans, in return for the many devastating epidemic diseases that Indians received from the OldWorld. There are two straightforward reasons for this gross imbalance. First, most of our familiar epidemic diseases can sustain themselves only in large dense human populations concentrated intovillages and cities, which arose much earlier in the Old World than in the New World. Second, recentstudies of microbes, by molecular biologists, have shown that most human epidemic diseases evolvedfrom similar epidemic diseases of the dense populations of Old World domestic animals with which wecame into close contact. For example, measles and TB evolved from diseases of our cattle, influenzafrom a disease of pigs, and smallpox possibly from a disease of camels. The Americas had very few
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...