Why Europeans conquered the world?

[Captain Blackbeard]

JARED DIAMOND, a researcher at UCLA, has been doing fieldwork in New Guinea for over 25 years. New Guinea is home to some of the last hunter-gatherers in the world. A long time ago, one of his New Guinea friends asked Diamond why white people had so much and New Guineans had so little.

That's an obvious question, but Jared was surprised to realize he didn't know the answer. In fact, he didn't know of anyone who knew the answer. When Europeans were busy conquering the Americas and Australia and New Zealand and parts of Asia and Africa, the obvious answer was that white people were superior. Either they were genetically superior, or their culture was superior. They were smarter or more capable. That explanation is clearly bad, but a good one has failed to take its place.

Why did Europeans conquer the world? Why, when Europeans came into contact with other places in the world, did they almost always conquer?

Jared Diamond had spent enough time with the New Guineans, living among them, to know that they were intelligent and resourceful people — in Diamond's opinion, more intelligent and resourceful than people living in modern societies, both because of natural selection (unintelligent and unresourceful people don't live long in the New Guinea wilds) and because the New Guinea environment is so difficult, and the death rate is so high, that they must smarten up as they grow up, or they don't make it to adulthood.

But if they are so smart, why hadn't they invented guns? Why hadn't they forged steel? Why were they so outmatched when Europeans landed on their island?

Diamond decided to find out why. And the way he started was a stroke of genius. He decided to go back to a time in history when all humans were equal. About 13,000 years ago all humans on the planet were hunter-gatherers. No group had much more than any other group. There were no civilizations, no cities, no rich people. They all had pretty much the same technology. Then what happened?

The first thing that changed was the domestication of animals and plants. Agriculture. That is the beginning of global inequality because agriculture wasn't invented everywhere at the same time. Some places started earlier than others. The first place people started farming and tending animals was in the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East near present-day Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. Agriculture was invented in other parts of the globe much later.

The people on the Eurasian continent got a huge head start. They started farming 2000 years, 4000 years, and in some cases 6000 years earlier than other places!

Now the question is again, why? Were people on other continents not as bright? Why didn't they start farming earlier? The answer is that in order for a people to settle down to agriculture, they need a complex combination of factors, and those factors happened to arise first in the Fertile Crescent, by the pure luck of geography. Those people happened to be living in the right place at the right time.



what it takes to start agriculture

Some groups of hunter-gatherers in New Guinea are semi-farmers. They cultivate banana trees. But the semi-farmers don't stay put. They haven't settled down and built cities. They don't live permanently in the area because their farming has never allowed them to. They have to keep moving. They come back a couple of times in the year, once to pull weeds, and once to actually harvest the bananas, but they have to keep moving in order to get enough to eat. Why?

The reason is simple: You can't store bananas. To settle down permanently, finding a food source you can farm isn't enough. It has to be the right kind of food source. The food source has to be something you can store, and it has to contain some protein. Bananas have very little protein. People can't live on it. They have to eat other things.

It turns out that in the Fertile Crescent, wheat grew wild. It lent itself to domestication in many ways, and because the growing season was so short in that area, the seeds were rather large and had evolved to remain dormant for a long time. In other words, here was a food you could store for a long time and it wouldn't rot. It also is pretty high in protein.

Jared Diamond and many others have scoured the globe for other potential plants that could fulfill the same requirements. They are very rare.

Not only that, but even a storable plant seed wasn't enough to switch from hunter-gatherers to farmers. They also needed an animal. They needed a good source of protein. People don't survive very well eating only grain, so wheat was not enough. And again, just by luck, in the Fertile Crescent, there was an animal that could be domesticated, and again, that wasn't true in most other parts of the world.

Wherever farming has taken hold around the world, the farmers had at least one domesticated animal to provide protein, at least one storable source of carbohydrates, and a legume (peas, lentils, beans, etc.). Legumes are also storable. They dry hard and don't rot readily. And they are higher in protein than grains, so they can be used as a protein supplement if animal protein becomes scarce.

With enough sustainable food like this, people could stop roaming, and form villages.

There are very few places in the world where a domesticatable animal, plus a storable carbohydrate, plus a legume all exist in the same place. Can you see why it is not enough just to have one of these items? If all you had was one, it wouldn't be enough food to sustain you.

There are places in the world where a grain grows. But farming didn't start and people didn't settle down because that isn't enough. To have a sustainable and complete agriculture, you need the combination, and it was rare. But it was available first in the Fertile Crescent, and it allowed people to settle down into villages.

That was the beginning. It doesn't seem like much, but agriculture brought into existence a whole chain of effects that allowed farmers to advance their technology far beyond hunter-gatherers.



the chain of effects

Here's what happened: People settled down. They had a more reliable source of food throughout the year (because it was storable), so they had more kids. A hunter-gatherer woman only gives birth every five years or so because hunter-gatherers move around a lot and until a child can walk on his own at a pretty good pace, the mother cannot afford to have another child.

But once people settle down into a village with a steady supply of food, they start having children at a rate close to one per year.

So the population of farmers grew faster than hunter-gatherers, allowing the farmers to outnumber and defeat hunter-gatherers in war.

Also, because settled farmers are settled, they can have more possessions, like tools and weapons. Hunter-gatherers had to carry their stuff with them, so they were limited in how many possessions they could accumulate. This has a long-term, limiting influence on the development of new technologies because often new inventions are built on previous inventions.

As farming techniques improved, farmers had more food excess to store, so some people no longer had to do the work of producing food. Specialists could then develop. Tool makers. Weapons makers. And because they were specialized and spent more time on their craft, they invented more. Technology improved faster.

So farmers had better weapons and greater numbers and could defeat hunter-gatherers even more effectively.

Another very important factor is: The more people you have together, the more ideas they exchange. The process of innovation began to accelerate when people settled down into towns and cities.

Hunter-gatherers hardly changed at all. They were relatively isolated, relatively small groups of people who didn't have the time or incentive to invent new technologies, and they couldn't carry much with them anyway, so their technologies remained relatively unchanged for thousands of years.



the importance of latitude

One important advantage the Eurasians had was a large piece of land stretching across the same latitude. Look at an atlas and find the Fertile Crescent. See how far land stretches in both directions on that latitude. It is enormous. So the combination of the domesticated plants and animals — the self-reliant, self-sustaining, and complete agricultural package — could (and did) spread east to Asia and west to Europe. To add to the advantage, that encouraged a constant interchange between these far-flung places, which also accelerated the pace of invention.

In the Americas, Australia, and Africa, the spreading was much more limited along the same latitude.

The reason latitude is important is that if you go east or west at the same latitude, you have similar lengths of day, somewhat similar climate and weather, which means plants and animals that survive well at one spot are more likely to survive well east or west of there, but not usually north or south of that spot.

Added to that, there were significant barriers to traveling north and south in Africa and the Americas. Huge deserts and impenetrable forests prevented one area from having much contact with other areas. So, for example, in Mesoamerica, they had invented the wheel. Down in South America, they had domesticated llamas. The people in Mesoamerica never got the llamas and the South Americans never got the wheel. Had both civilizations lived on the same latitude, it is likely both would have used the wheel and the llama.

So the width of the Eurasian continent is a huge factor in the acceleration of technology. But there was another factor that gave the Europeans a back-breaking advantage when they encountered Native Americans and Africans (and Hawaiians and Australian Aborigines, etc.). Whenever Europeans in the Age of Discovery encountered anyone from any other continent, they brought disease.



why didn't diseases go both ways?

Why is it that when Europeans landed on the shores of the Americas that the Native Americans were devastated by so many diseases brought by the Europeans? And why didn't the Native Americans have their own diseases to give to the white man? Why did Europeans have such a huge collection of deadly diseases that they had a resistance to, but the Native Americans didn't have very many diseases that Europeans had no resistance to?

Interesting question, isn't it? The answer is that most of our diseases — smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, flu, etc. — originally came from the animals Europeans had domesticated.

Here's how it works: First, an animal has a microbe that infects it, say cowpox (an actual case). Because humans are hanging around cows a lot, some of the microbes jump to the humans, but generally speaking, they can't survive. But a little random mutation here and there and all of a sudden smallpox comes into existence and wipes out huge portions of the European population. It mutated to become a human disease. This happened again and again. Plague after plague swept through Europe over the centuries, killing off everyone who didn't have some resistance to it.

Native Americans hadn't domesticated very many animals. They didn't have cows, horses, pigs, chickens, goats, sheep, geese, oxen, donkeys, etc. But Europeans had all these any many more.

That's why the disease exchange was so one-sided. Disease did far more to create an imbalance between Europeans and Native Americans than all the other factors put together.



buy why not the Chinese?

So far, this explains why people on the Eurasian continent dominated people on other continents. But the Eurasian continent is very wide. Why wasn't it the people from the Middle East or China who did the conquering? Why was it Europeans?

The Middle East is too dry for intensive farming now. Most of the forests have been cut down and didn't grow back. The place is like a desert these days, which was not the case 13,000 years ago when agriculture was just getting started. So their ability to survive well, much less produce surplus food, diminished over time. At the time Europe began its Age of Discovery, around 1500 AD, the Middle East was agriculturally past its prime and not in a position to compete.

China, on the other hand, could have been a potential rival for world exploration and dominance around 1500, but right about that time, the ruler of China decided to dismantle all the shipyards in China! No more exploration by sea, he said. One of the things that prevented China from being the people who conquered the other continents, in other words, was China's unity. A single ruler could decide the fortunes of the whole region. Not so in Europe.

Europe has lots of natural barriers: It is divided by water and mountains and lots of jutting landmasses. So Europe has been continually divided into states. In the 1500's, those states were all competing with each other. Even if you had a ruler or two who didn't want to explore the world, you would have other rulers who would, and they would become rich and essentially force the other states to jump in or fall behind (or even be conquered).



this is the answer to the question

Our original question was, why did Europeans conquer the world? The answer is, because they happened to live on the Eurasian continent, so they were lucky enough to start agriculture earlier than any other place on earth. Just by luck, they were at the right latitude with the right combination of available animals and plants that could be domesticated. And with a head start of thousands of years, their technology was more advanced. And because of their close association with their domesticated animals, they carried many diseases to which they had resistance but people from other continents did not. Because of their head start, Europeans possessed guns, germs, and steel and they conquered the world with them.

Much of the global inequality seen today comes from this original source.

Source (http://www.youmeworks.com/why_europeans.html)

too short

[whydoyouwanttoknow]

Actually, Europeans stole or traded for pretty much everything they conquered the world with.

Europeans didn't invent gun powder. They didn't invent the printing press. They didn't invent forging steel. They didn't invent agriculture. The list goes on.

However, unlike the Chinese who did invent practically everything the Europeans conquered the world with, the Chinese were content to sit in China and let the rest of the world do its own thing. If 1000 years ago if China had decided to conquer the world we'd all be speaking Chinese instead of English. In fact, while the Europeans could barely build ships bigger than a large family car, the Chinese were sailing around Africa in ships that were something like 100 metres plus in length.

[Ahknaton]

Actually, Europeans stole or traded for pretty much everything they conquered the world with.
The ability to laren from other cultures and integrate their knowledge into one's own is a positive thing, not a negative. This is another reason the Chinese failed to conquer the world: they turned their noses up at European inventions, whereas Europeans were happy to adopt foreign inventions.
Europeans didn't invent gun powder. They didn't invent the printing press. They didn't invent forging steel. They didn't invent agriculture. The list goes on.
They did invent the printing press actually. It was first invented by the Chinese, but it was independently invented in Europe rather than being adopted from China. What counts is that the Europeans actually used it! The Chinese failed to appreciate it's potential, and their printing press was more akin to a glorified stamp than Gutenberg's contraption. Also, despite Europeans not inventing everything (common sense really) there was actually a burst of invention during the Middle Ages that accelerated during the Enlightenment. It's easy to cite inventions that were invented outside Europe and then claim "the list goes on" as if to imply that the Europeans invented practically nothing, but in fact their inventions were legion: reliable timepieces (crucial for accurate navigation), eyeglasses (enabled precision craftwork as well as correcting poor eyesight) and so on. You can argue till the cows come home about which were more important but in the final analysis it was the Europeans who utilised both their own and the inventions of others to their full potential.
However, unlike the Chinese who did invent practically everything the Europeans conquered the world with, the Chinese were content to sit in China and let the rest of the world do its own thing. If 1000 years ago if China had decided to conquer the world we'd all be speaking Chinese instead of English. In fact, while the Europeans could barely build ships bigger than a large family car, the Chinese were sailing around Africa in ships that were something like 100 metres plus in length.
I wouldn't be so sure about this. There is a lot of propaganda about Chinese explorations prior to Europeans, however in some cases the evidence for this has been shown to be dubious (e.g. Chinese maps supposedly drawn by expolorers that have been subsequently been shown to be drawn much later than claimed, or cribbed off Europeans).

[Tellurocrat]

"The Chinese were content to sit in China."

With this you'd imagine that China and the Chinese existed from eternity, and were not themselves the creations of conquests and counter-conquests. All peoples conquered others. Some were more successful at it.

[whydoyouwanttoknow]

The ability to laren from other cultures and integrate their knowledge into one's own is a positive thing, not a negative. This is another reason the Chinese failed to conquer the world: they turned their noses up at European inventions, whereas Europeans were happy to adopt foreign inventions.

They did invent the printing press actually. It was first invented by the Chinese, but it was independently invented in Europe rather than being adopted from China. What counts is that the Europeans actually used it! The Chinese failed to appreciate it's potential, and their printing press was more akin to a glorified stamp than Gutenberg's contraption. Also, despite Europeans not inventing everything (common sense really) there was actually a burst of invention during the Middle Ages that accelerated during the Enlightenment. It's easy to cite inventions that were invented outside Europe and then claim "the list goes on" as if to imply that the Europeans invented practically nothing, but in fact their inventions were legion: reliable timepieces (crucial for accurate navigation), eyeglasses (enabled precision craftwork as well as correcting poor eyesight) and so on. You can argue till the cows come home about which were more important but in the final analysis it was the Europeans who utilised both their own and the inventions of others to their full potential.

I wouldn't be so sure about this. There is a lot of propaganda about Chinese explorations prior to Europeans, however in some cases the evidence for this has been shown to be dubious (e.g. Chinese maps supposedly drawn by expolorers that have been subsequently been shown to be drawn much later than claimed, or cribbed off Europeans).

I'm sure that if European languages had 50 000 letters in the alphabet that they too wouldn't have used the printing press as much either.

I thought eyeglasses were from the Middle East since it was Arab scientists who did much of the early work on optics?

[Macrobius]

It looks like our modern fairy tales are converging on the Gnostic story, as their logic suggests they must:


Diamond decided to find out why. And the way he started was a stroke of genius. He decided to go back to a time in history when all humans were equal. About 13,000 years ago all humans on the planet were hunter-gatherers. No group had much more than any other group. There were no civilizations, no cities, no rich people. They all had pretty much the same technology. Then what happened?

The first thing that changed was the domestication of animals and plants. Agriculture. That is the beginning of global inequality because agriculture wasn't invented everywhere at the same time. Some places started earlier than others. The first place people started farming and tending animals was in the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East near present-day Syria, Jordan, and Iraq. Agriculture was invented in other parts of the globe much later.

The people on the Eurasian continent got a huge head start. They started farming 2000 years, 4000 years, and in some cases 6000 years earlier than other places!


In other words, before the Neo-Lithic revolution, there were pre-Adamics. Then the superior Adamics took over, starting around 4000 B.C. in the vicinity of the Hittites (Aryans and agriculture, you know). Renfrew's version of the Kurgan invasions.

Of course, in this version, the remnants of pre-Adamics will be 'equal' to the Adamics, and all one happy family, instead of semi-human cattle to be herded and exterminated at will. It's not fair, you see, for the Adamics to be superior.

There will be one Gnostic group, though, that will hold on to the older view. No prizes for guessing who.

[guy]

Modern electricity (+ the light bulb, modern batteries, countless electrical devices for the home and for work), transportation (cars, trains, subways, planes, steam ships, coal, gass, and oil-based engines, jets, rockets, etc.), communication (radio, radar, phones, etc.) medicine (antibiotics, X-rays, the microscope, emphasizing the significance of hygiene, etc.), computers, entertainment (the TV, cinema, tape recorders, electric musical instruments, etc.), chemistry (discovering the structure of the atom and molecules, inventing plastic, vulcanized rubber, etc.), physics (gravity, electromagnetics, the microwave, etc.), biology (discovering the structure/function of DNA and RNA, protein and fat structure/function, genetic engineering, developing tissue cultures, the discovery of endless molecules, cells and organisms, the theory of evolution, etc.), indoor plumbing and peanut butter.

^ = partial list of things Europeans stole from whydoyouwanttoknow and his Hutu compatriots. Really they did.

[whydoyouwanttoknow]

Modern electricity (+ the light bulb, modern batteries, countless electrical devices for the home and for work), transportation (cars, trains, subways, planes, steam ships, coal, gass, and oil-based engines, jets, rockets, etc.), communication (radio, radar, phones, etc.) medicine (antibiotics, X-rays, the microscope, emphasizing the significance of hygiene, etc.), computers, entertainment (the TV, cinema, tape recorders, electric musical instruments, etc.), chemistry (discovering the structure of the atom and molecules, inventing plastic, vulcanized rubber, etc.), physics (gravity, electromagnetics, the microwave, etc.), biology (discovering the structure/function of DNA and RNA, protein and fat structure/function, genetic engineering, developing tissue cultures, the discovery of endless molecules, cells and organisms, the theory of evolution, etc.), indoor plumbing and peanut butter.

^^ = partial list of things Europeans stole from whydoyouwanttoknow and his Hutu compatriots. Really they did.

So you say modern batteries since they've been around for thousands of years as ancient batteries? Gee, maybe in a few thousand years someone can invent something we use today and just call it modern?

Now hygiene..... I thought the Arabs for one were concerned about washing, etc back when the Europeans thought that was the devil!

[Ahknaton]

I'm sure that if European languages had 50 000 letters in the alphabet that they too wouldn't have used the printing press as much either.
Well, why not just invent a new alphabet then? The Koreans got fed up of having to learn 50K Chinese characters and invented Hangul.
I thought eyeglasses were from the Middle East since it was Arab scientists who did much of the early work on optics?
Magnifying glasses date back to the ancient world. Arabs did make some contributions however eyeglasses as we know them are an Italian invention.

[guy]

So you say modern batteries since they've been around for thousands of years as ancient batteries? Gee, maybe in a few thousand years someone can invent something we use today and just call it modern?
1. The modern ones were developed independently.

2. The ancient ones didn't have any known function (though I'm sure you could speculate and make up an ideology from this speculation).

3. The modern ones are very useful.


Now hygiene..... I thought the Arabs for one were concerned about washing, etc back when the Europeans thought that was the devil!
Learning is fun. The Europeans did. Perhaps the Arabs will some day, too.

But since it's the day after Christmas, I'll give you these two inventions/developments. With the PB, that brings the Hutu up to 3.

[Kriger]

Excerpt:

Now hygiene..... I thought the Arabs for one were concerned about washing, etc back when the Europeans thought that was the devil!

Heh. Now that's amusing. Would you like to share your source for this misinformation? Or is it of your own imagination?

[guy]

Heh. Now that's amusing. Would you like to share your source for this misinformation? Or is it of your own imagination?
I googled it up (had to use several different wordings, ending up with "hygiene history europe devil"), and found this:

http://historyundressed.blogspot.com/2008/07/history-of-hygiene-bathing-teeth.html

Bathing…

As in a lot of things medieval bathing was by some seen as a form of sexual debauchery and by others seen as letting the devil into you. It was also widely believed that being naked and letting the water touch you would make you severely ill.

At any rate, those that were able to in medieval times bathed more than we thought they did, by most historians standards. It particularly became more popular during the outbreak of the Black Plague. People were looking for reasons why it was spreading and how to decrease the effects, they found that frequent hand-washing in warm water, warm wine and also in vinegar helped. They also found that keeping the surroundings more clean helped too.

[delete]

Soap is a germanic invention, and it most probably arrived since they needed to keep their milk utensiles clean, and not because they wanted to smell nice.

The germanics even stopped using cermamics, using wood instead, as it is easier to keep clean and is naturally anti-bacterial.

[Ambrosio Spinola]

Soap is a germanic invention, and it most probably arrived since they needed to keep their milk utensiles clean, and not because they wanted to smell nice.

The germanics even stopped using cermamics, using wood instead, as it is easier to keep clean and is naturally anti-bacterial.

I have always thought that the accidental discovery of soap was to the Celts. Not that any of them really realitzed at such times the real process. Doctors started to wash their hands with soap not until mid XIX century.

Germans stopped using ceramics? When would that have been delete? I have never heard about such a thing.

Now hygiene..... I thought the Arabs for one were concerned about washing, etc back when the Europeans thought that was the devil!

Arabs learned to bath and wash from their neighboring civilitzed Bizantines. Of course we are speaking here about the high classes as the concept of massive public baths was something they did not copy.

So much desinformation...

[Petr]

Arabs learned to bath and wash from their neighboring civilitzed Bizantines. Of course we are speaking here about the high classes as the concept of massive public baths was something they did not copy.

So much desinformation...
Yes, the so-called "Turkish bath" institution is simply the Roman-Byzantine bath that invading Turkish scum took over:

http://www.thephora.net/forum/showpost.php?p=274431&postcount=3


Petr

[Tellurocrat]

The Arabs come from the Arabian peninsula (Saudi Arabia), whereas the Turks came from north-western Asia.

The Arabs adopted the western Roman bath far before the Turks adopted it from the Byzantines.

[Kriger]

I googled it up (had to use several different wordings, ending up with "hygiene history europe devil"), and found this:

http://historyundressed.blogspot.com/2008/07/history-of-hygiene-bathing-teeth.html

Well, I am not sure who the "some" were who viewed bathing in this manner, but cleanliness was an important aspect in Scandinavian societies, contrary to popular belief. Googling "Old Norse bathing practices" (no quotes) provides numerous sources that verify this. The following link is merely one source:

http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/daily_living/text/health_and_medicine.htm

This in reference to the Viking Age. Bathing was practiced prior to this.

[delete]

I have always thought that the accidental discovery of soap was to the Celts. Not that any of them really realitzed at such times the real process. Doctors started to wash their hands with soap not until mid XIX century.


It might have been the celts invented it, as the whole of Denmark and Germany was celtic at a time and thus answerable to a lot more prehistoric inventions than the germanics, but the word is germanic also in latin.

Soap is something that comes naturally, when you already use lye from woodash for other uses, say washing wooden containers for foodstuff with lye before you put food back in them again.

Also lye in english, lut in scandinvian, lauge i german, is similar enough to show ancestry, but also dissimilar enough to show it is most probably not a relative late loan word, hinting that it already was a common ingredient before the germanic expansion.

When you look at glass, two different varieties were produced in Europe, glass containing TiO2 from woodash as fixing agent, that we know the germanic used, and without these atoms by the people living around the mediterranian that had other sources for soda.


Germans stopped using ceramics? When would that have been delete? I have never heard about such a thing.

Only about a third of the germans are germanic IIRC, most of them being what we could call original inhabitantes. (Hallstadt Celts?) I should have said the nordics stopped uing ceramics at least for foodstuff, untill modern glasing techniques stopped making them bacterial bombs with dairy products. You can for instance store oil in ceramics but butter will get a rancid smell from the last time you stored butter in it.

I am not an archeologist so I don't know how early they stopped, but I am pretty sure that by the pre-roman iron age, they had stopped, substituting it instead with wood, soapstone or iron.

This substitution again has something to do with the invention or adaptation of the pole lathe and other specialist woodworking tools to make the bowls and cups.
http://www.regia.org/images/woodwork.jpg
http://www.regia.org/images/lathe.gif
http://www.regia.org/woodwork.htm

This pole lathe is again connected to the Viking lenses.


Arabs learned to bath and wash from their neighboring civilitzed Bizantines. Of course we are speaking here about the high classes as the concept of massive public baths was something they did not copy.

So much desinformation...
The meaning of the word saturday in the scandinavian languages is still washday, as you should be clean when you met the new sun. It is funny that this days name was changed to saturns day in English, most likely by the Church. I guess washing was more horrible than the roman god. :)

[DonaldT]

I've heard so much about Jared Diamond from anti-racists and multicult supporters for the last year that I decided to do a little research in the last twenty four hours and read a few of his articles. Particularly after I stumbled upon this thread.

This article (http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/claessen/agriculture/mistake_jared_diamond.pdf) of Jared Diamond's in 1987 seems to deny the fact that 'leisure time' played a big part in the advancement of civilization.

...Are twentieth century hunter gatherers really worse off than farmers? Scattered throughout the world, several dozen groups of so-called primitive people, like the Kalahari Bushmen, continue to support themselves that way. It turns out that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard time than their farming neighbours. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only twelve to nineteen hours for one group of Bushmen, fourteen hours or less by the Hadza nomads of Tanzania.

Now, most academics accept that the introduction of agriculture resulted in more leisure time and therefore allowed people to improve technology. Jared seems to deny this completely in the 1997 article and rather puts it down to 'permanent settlement,' 'increased population,' 'exchanging of ideas' and 'more possessions.'

However, the 1997 article seems to indicate that he believes the 'leisure time' created by agriculture seemed to play a part in new technology.

Hunter-gatherers hardly changed at all. They were relatively isolated, relatively small groups of people who didn't have the time or incentive to invent new technologies, and they couldn't carry much with them anyway, so their technologies remained relatively unchanged for thousands of years.

So Jared seems to contradict himself a bit there (Even though the 1997 article is written by Adam Kahn and not Jared himself) . He seems to indicate that hunter gatherers have plenty of leisure time to think up new technology in the 1987 article whereas the 1997 article seems to indicate that Jared believes that hunter gatherers had little leisure time.

I seem to find Jared's assumption that 'an increased population' and 'permanent settlement' eventually led to Europeans conquering the world and that it was 'merely chance' ...pretty doubtful. He assumes too many things and doesn't 'prove' much. He also doesn't cover all topics.


For example, why weren't there many permanent settlements near the ocean in north-east Australia? Why didn't the Aboriginals establish permanent settlements along the ocean if there's a consistent food source (Seafood)? (I'm just assuming there are no permanent Aboriginal settlements along the Australian coastline prior to European settlement). Even if there were permanent Aboriginal settlements, why didn't their technology get any better than throwing sticks and making farting noises into logs?

[Ambrosio Spinola]

It might have been the celts invented it, as the whole of Denmark and Germany was celtic at a time and thus answerable to a lot more prehistoric inventions than the germanics, but the word is germanic also in latin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap

I know its Wikipedia but the history of this product seems to go well beyond the "germanics".

I should have said the nordics stopped uing ceramics at least for foodstuff, untill modern glasing techniques stopped making them bacterial bombs with dairy products. You can for instance store oil in ceramics but butter will get a rancid smell from the last time you stored butter in it.

I am not an archeologist so I don't know how early they stopped, but I am pretty sure that by the pre-roman iron age, they had stopped, substituting it instead with wood, soapstone or iron.

Delete, there is an interrupted use in germania of pottery since it was first introduced there up until today. You contention that "Nordics" had some fore-knowledge about bacteria and thus liked wood better is unheard off.
Romans, like many other cultures, were very well versed in woodworking too. The use of wooden dishes, containters and cuttlery is not something "nordic" but something you will see everywhere at this time. This did not stop the use of pottery at all but just complemented it.

[Julian Curtis Lee]

So I guess it was Luck? Or Fate? Or Providence? Well, O.K.

Now let's talk about whether fate is random or involves karma.

And where does good karma come from?
That explanation is clearly bad,...
Um, why is that explanation clearly bad?

[delete]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap

I know its Wikipedia but the history of this product seems to go well beyond the "germanics".

That really was low even for a wikipedia article.

If the arabs knew soap, why would that ibn guy say it was snot and froth, when the Rus washes in it?

It is not a leap of faith to understand that spit is the closest soap will be compared to if he has never seen it before, since it makes bubbles and clean dirt easier than pure water.


Delete, there is an interrupted use in germania of pottery since it was first introduced there up until today. You contention that "Nordics" had some fore-knowledge about bacteria and thus liked wood better is unheard off.
Can you try storing milk produce in cermics without modern glasing?

Ceramics is pourus material, so it will make a very bad smell. You can be an idiot and understand this, same way as you can understand that human feces is more dangerous than say cows feces because it smells worse.

As I said, they might not have stopped using pottery in germania, but they did stop in Scandinavia and I think the reason is milk.


Romans, like many other cultures, were very well versed in woodworking too. The use of wooden dishes, containters and cuttlery is not something "nordic" but something you will see everywhere at this time. This did not stop the use of pottery at all but just complemented it.
It is not about the imposibility of other cultures to make plates and cups out of wood, it is dead simple.

The question is why wooden plates and such won out in the nordic countries, when they cost more labour hours to make than the ceramic one. My guess is that they were easier to clean, since milk produce remains starts to smell bad after a while in a porous material.

Also since the nordics lived in log-houses, and build boats and wagons at the time, it is not hard to understand that they had the neccesary tools to make the switch, while for somebody who build in stone, the alternative cost would have been to high.

[Ambrosio Spinola]

It is not a leap of faith to understand that spit is the closest soap will be compared to if he has never seen it before, since it makes bubbles and clean dirt easier than pure water.

I found the article all in all quite informative, if only to dispell the notion that this was something original invented un purpose by scandinavian nordics.
What is a lead of faith is reading Ibn and read soap where he says snot and spit and think that while he dwelled amongst these rather primitive people he would not have noticed the difference.
I do not see anything dishonorable to admit your forefathers were not the Kempish God-inventors and did take up to the high renaissance to start developing into a serious nation.

Can you try storing milk produce in cermics without modern glasing?

Ceramics is pourus material, so it will make a very bad smell. You can be an idiot and understand this, same way as you can understand that human feces is more dangerous than say cows feces because it smells worse.

This is all swell and stuff but does not mean there was no pottery at the same time. Or worse, that they had some sort of advanced knowledge about bacteria. Romans, per example loved the garum sauce, which was basically sun dried rotting fish concentrate. They used to transport this juice in amphorae, which although, as you say, is porus material and would impregnate the odour, was, as you said also, very cheap to produce and would be replaced inmediatly as container.
Then again, romans had no little knowledge of woodwork, did also wooden ships, most of their urban housing had also quite some wood in them and used a wide variety of local and imported wood for their items.

As I said, they might not have stopped using pottery in germania, but they did stop in Scandinavia and I think the reason is milk.

Sorry, thought you meant the germanics who were since times inmemorial closer in contact with advanced civilization.

[Mackie]

All thats quoted in the original post is explaining why europeans least were superior. The fact that they atleast were, is still the truth.

[Locksley Hall]

Diamond is an anthropologist, not a historian. He needs to stick to his original craft, and not delve into the realm of historical geographic determinism. It's essentially Calvinism wrapped up into a historical narrative, where certain cultures are destined for success.

I have read the book Carnage and Culture by Victor Davis Hanson twice now, and it offers such a compelling and realistic counter-point to the typical Diamond theory regurgitated by Liberal Academia throughout the nation. There is always a human element regarding decisions made throughout history, and Diamond ignores that considerably. Not to mention the obvious contradictions in his argument, regarding China especially.

For instance:
China, on the other hand, could have been a potential rival for world exploration and dominance around 1500, but right about that time, the ruler of China decided to dismantle all the shipyards in China! No more exploration by sea, he said.

Here we have all of the geographic parameters set up for success on a world wide scale, yet the Chinese political leaders chose to focus internally.

If the human element can stifle world exploration, as it did with China, then how come it can't undertake it as was the case with Europeans?

Because to say so would make the argument that the European thought-process was somehow superior to others, and theory that is entirely unpardonable in Academia, where relativism is rampant.

[calvin]

Diamond is full of shit. Full of Boasian Frankfurt School shit to be precise.

On the domestication of animals Diamond avers that European animals were innately more capable of domestication. If we take the horse as an example, Diamond ignores the fact that the European horse was herded, like reindeer are by the Sami, as a food animal for thousands of years. Over time more complaisant horses were selected as mounts for the herders. Cross breeding of these few mares and stallions selected, over vast periods of time, the traits that were necessary for full domestication. Unlikely animals like llamas and reindeer have been bred to a state of semi-domestication by humans. Reindeer are ridden like horses and are trained to pull sleighs. In Africa the Ostrich can be used to pull racing buggies. Diamond's distinction between an animal capable of domestication and an animal incapable of domestication is not based on possibilities, but purely on whether or not a species has been domesticated or not. This is classic post hoc ergo prompter hoc fallacy, the currency of bullshit artist everywhere. Diamond asks why didn't Africans on Rhinos or suchlike invade Europe? He treats us to his prepared answer, conveniently ignoring Hannibal, who did, in fact, raid Europe with an army mounted on indigenous African animals.

The secret that Guns Germs and Steel tries clumsily to obscure is that there is an obvious environmental feedback loop that has selected for higher intelligence and altruism among non-savanna dwelling Eurasians, who had to develop survival strategies in a a region in which there was a marked seasonal disparity in the availability of food. Diamonds historical interpretation is a blow struck in a broader campaign by his ethnic group to persuade the Anglo-Celtic majority, among whom his tribe chooses to reside, to surrender their ethnic and cultural integrity, whilst this group retains staunch ethno-cultural preservation as its own policy. GG&S is a compendium of false logic. You would have to be an idiot to believe this tripe.

[Ambrosio Spinola]

He treats us to his prepared answer, conveniently ignoring Hannibal, who did, in fact, raid Europe with an army mounted on indigenous African animals.


The use of the elephant as a war machine came slowly west from Alexander´s experiences in the east. The first time Carthaginians ever saw an elephant being used in war was fighting against Pyrrhus in Sicilly. In warfare, the smaller north-african elephant was quite a let down, not measuring up to their Selucid armored model.

[Stanley]

When Europeans were busy conquering the Americas and Australia and New Zealand and parts of Asia and Africa, the obvious answer was that white people were superior. Either they were genetically superior, or their culture was superior. They were smarter or more capable. That explanation is clearly bad, but a good one has failed to take its place.I tuned out right there, convinced that whatever followed would be egalitarian propaganda.

[Basil Fawlty]

Diamond is full of shit. Full of Boasian Frankfurt School shit to be precise.

.....

The secret that Guns Germs and Steel tries clumsily to obscure is that there is an obvious environmental feedback loop that has selected for higher intelligence and altruism among non-savanna dwelling Eurasians, who had to develop survival strategies in a a region in which there was a marked seasonal disparity in the availability of food. Diamonds historical interpretation is a blow struck in a broader campaign by his ethnic group to persuade the Anglo-Celtic majority, among whom his tribe chooses to reside, to surrender their ethnic and cultural integrity, whilst this group retains staunch ethno-cultural preservation as its own policy. GG&S is a compendium of false logic. You would have to be an idiot to believe this tripe.A number of years back, around the time this book went into paperback and everyone and his dog was babbling about it, someone pressed it upon me as something I really needed to read (this alone would almost ensure that I would not read it, that he was someone who's world view is mildly repugnant to me, guaranteed it), meanwhile I lost contact with this fellow. A few months ago I was having a clear out and came across the book. I dipped into it and was immediately confirmed in my original decision to ignore it. Off to the charity bag with it!
So, yes, what a load of codswallop.

[calvin]

1. The unrivalled extent of the Eurasian landmass allowed the proliferation of many different civilisations, between which information could be exchanged allowing far greater cross-fertilization of cultures.
Wrong! However unified the Eurasian land-mass may look to a cartographer, it is intractably divided by formidable topographical features. Europe is isolated from Central Asia by the Alps, the Urals, the Caucasus, the Russian Steppes, the Taiga and the Anatolian plateau. East Asia is divided from Central Asia by the Thar desert the Himalayas the Gobi desert and the Tian Shan mountains. No significant cultural exchanges took place between these regions until the 15th century, by which time sub-Saharan Africa and America lagged far behind Europe and China in terms of technology and higher cultural attainment. Sub-Saharan Africa lies as close to the Fertile Crescent, regarded as the cradle of civilisation, as Western Europe and far closer than China.

2. A diverse abundance of potential food crops is necessary in order for settled agricultural communities to flourish.
Wrong! The Inca created a complex civilisation based on the cultivation of two food crops, the potato and maize. Large agricultural communities, like Cahokia in North America, flourished on the exploitation of maize. Western European agriculture was overwhelmingly based on wheat production, China's on rice.

3.The European biome contained a greater variety of domesticable crops than Africa and America and these crops were more nutritious.
Wrong! America had indigenous food crops which were more nutritious than European staples. Beans, corn, squashes and peanuts are superior to wheat and, if grown in rotation, create a self-replenishing agricultural cycle. Far from having no viable indigenous staples, Africa had okra, rice, sorghum, millet, the bambara ground nut, black-eyed peas, watermelons and numerous gourds and tubers, as well as immensely useful plants such as the oil palm and the tamarisk. African slaves actually introduced rice cultivation to the United States. The standard refrence on this subject is, "Lost Crops of Africa".

4. Eurasia had more domesticable large mammals than Sub-Saharan Africa or the Americas.
Wrong! Africa has indigenous breeds of sheep, goats and cattle which were spread from the Sudan to the Cape by 200AD. The South Americans domesticated the llama. The North Americans, like the Aboriginals of Australia, almost hunted their domesticable mammals to extinction. Why didn't Europeans hunt horses, cows and sheep to extinction?

5. Only urban civilisations can develop the levels of technological skill and social organisztion required for military conquest.
Wrong! The two greatest conquerors in history, Atilla the Hun and Ghengis Khan came from nomadic tribal civilisations. Rome was overthrown by nomads. The Indus valley civilisation was destroyed by Indo-European barbarians.

6. The transmission of European diseases helped European nations conquer non-European nations.
Wrong! The European nations had achieved such technological superiority to non-European nations by the colonial epoch, that there could be no serious question of a non-European army successfully resisting an attack by a European army. Europeans conquered huge swathes of territory with tiny armies (Pizzaro). Epidemic disease only became a factor post-conquest. In Africa, India and South America native diseases like malaria were just as deadly to Europeans as European diseases were to the indigenous peoples.

7. China lacked the type of convoluted coastline necessary for dissidents to hide out in.
Bizzare! Is Jared Diamond trying to claim that dissidents can only hide on convoluted coastlines? This is about as strange as his assumption that only large bodies of water constitute an effective barrier to trade and travel. China abounds in intractable wastes and remote mountain ranges where bandits and outlaws fled the authority of central government, the most obvious region being the famous water margin.

8. Urban populations are less intelligent than non-urban populations.
Western European civilisation sets a premium on education. Abstract reasoning skills are rewarded by better employment prospects, which in turn create enhanced relationship opportunities, meaning that intelligent people are encouraged to procreate with other intelligent people, unlike in Papua New Guinea, where the physical prowess is far more important than deductive logic.

Europe and China developed the worlds greatest civilisations in regions which were no bigger than the regions inhabited by any other cultures, which enjoyed no great advantages in terms of agricultural potential, which had no special abundance of handy food crops and which had particular disadvantages in terms of climate. Diamond's theory sounds so incontestable because he has edited out substantial volumes of contradictory information with the skill and shamelessness of a Stalin era Commisar.

[DonaldT]

Diamond is full of shit. Full of Boasian Frankfurt School shit to be precise.

On the domestication of animals Diamond avers that European animals were innately more capable of domestication. If we take the horse as an example, Diamond ignores the fact that the European horse was herded, like reindeer are by the Sami, as a food animal for thousands of years. Over time more complaisant horses were selected as mounts for the herders. Cross breeding of these few mares and stallions selected, over vast periods of time, the traits that were necessary for full domestication. Unlikely animals like llamas and reindeer have been bred to a state of semi-domestication by humans. Reindeer are ridden like horses and are trained to pull sleighs. In Africa the Ostrich can be used to pull racing buggies. Diamond's distinction between an animal capable of domestication and an animal incapable of domestication is not based on possibilities, but purely on whether or not a species has been domesticated or not. This is classic post hoc ergo prompter hoc fallacy, the currency of bullshit artist everywhere. Diamond asks why didn't Africans on Rhinos or suchlike invade Europe? He treats us to his prepared answer, conveniently ignoring Hannibal, who did, in fact, raid Europe with an army mounted on indigenous African animals.

The secret that Guns Germs and Steel tries clumsily to obscure is that there is an obvious environmental feedback loop that has selected for higher intelligence and altruism among non-savanna dwelling Eurasians, who had to develop survival strategies in a a region in which there was a marked seasonal disparity in the availability of food. Diamonds historical interpretation is a blow struck in a broader campaign by his ethnic group to persuade the Anglo-Celtic majority, among whom his tribe chooses to reside, to surrender their ethnic and cultural integrity, whilst this group retains staunch ethno-cultural preservation as its own policy. GG&S is a compendium of false logic. You would have to be an idiot to believe this tripe.

Great posting Calvin.

[Transcendentally Challenged]

I'm sure that if European languages had 50 000 letters in the alphabet that they too wouldn't have used the printing press as much either.

I thought eyeglasses were from the Middle East since it was Arab scientists who did much of the early work on optics?

Chinese language doesn't have letters. It has hieroglyphs.

And there is nothing that prevents from massive priniting in Chinese now.

[Transcendentally Challenged]

So I guess it was Luck? Or Fate? Or Providence? Well, O.K.

Now let's talk about whether fate is random or involves karma.

And where does good karma come from?

Um, why is that explanation clearly bad?

How can there be a collective karma?

[Mackie]

Diamond is full of shit. Full of Boasian Frankfurt School shit to be precise.

On the domestication of animals Diamond avers that European animals were innately more capable of domestication. If we take the horse as an example, Diamond ignores the fact that the European horse was herded, like reindeer are by the Sami, as a food animal for thousands of years.*snip*
...Actually, calvin, sami were hunter-gatherers (iirc like the most of us but dont quote me on that) and took up herding only in 1700-1800 ;P

[Ahknaton]

How can there be a collective karma?
If people are only born into the groups they deserve to be born into (based on their previous lives' accumulated karma) and therefore only end up incurring collective karmic debts that they deserved anyway.

(I have no idea if that's how it works, just suggesting a possible way it might).

[Transcendentally Challenged]

If people are only born into the groups they deserve to be born into (based on their previous lives' accumulated karma) and therefore only end up incurring collective karmic debts that they deserved anyway.

(I have no idea if that's how it works, just suggesting a possible way it might).

err... I still can't understand this part "therefore only end up incurring collective karmic debts that they deserved anyway".

Because to my knowledge, there simply is no such thing as collective karmic debt. Karmic debt is always personal for acts committed by persons themselves.

[Petr]

...Actually, calvin, sami were hunter-gatherers (iirc like the most of us but dont quote me on that) and took up herding only in 1700-1800 ;P
Ihan tosi? Tuota en tiennykkään... 1700-1800 ennen vai jälkeen Kristuksen?


Petr

[Ambrosio Spinola]

I would inmagine he means BC

[Mackie]

after, as far as i know. there propably was small time herding always but they generally were hunter-gatherers (sami).
but as usual feel free to correct me on this, its just something i remember reading a while back but cant quite remember from where.

[elbwgreez]

err... I still can't understand this part "therefore only end up incurring collective karmic debts that they deserved anyway".

Because to my knowledge, there simply is no such thing as collective karmic debt. Karmic debt is always personal for acts committed by persons themselves.

Or maybe there's no such thing as karma at all.

[Transcendentally Challenged]

Or maybe there's no such thing as karma at all.

I tend to agree with you, but for the sake of the arguement...

[calvin]

Actually, calvin, sami were hunter-gatherers (iirc like the most of us but dont quote me on that) and took up herding only in 1700-1800 ;P

Hi Mackie! I didn't know that, but if you think about it, it actually strengthens my point. The Sami have brought reindeer, an animal that would otherwise be considered to be untameable, into a state of semi-domestication in an even briefer period of time than I thought. The only thing I know about the Sami is that you don't ask them how many reindeer they own and they make the world's coolest knives.

[Maponus]

I tuned out right there, convinced that whatever followed would be egalitarian propaganda.

If everybody behaved like that, I'd still post on revleft.com. ;)