swingbeat: 14/26: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
Recommended, but WOW this book took me forever to read. It's pretty interesting - the author goes and tries to answer this general question: Why did Europeans end up dominating the world? (I paraphrased)
When Europeans arrived in the New World, why did the Native Americans have no way of resisting them, and why could they not fight the smallpox (and why did they not infect the Europeans)?
One can answer simply - "Europeans had guns, germs, and steel, Native Americans did not." This is true, and the author digs back in history to understand how Eurasians ended up with these technologies and germs. He reaches far back in history to dicuss why the Fertile Crescent caused such a population boom, why there was more food there (and large domesticatable mammals), compared to other regions of the world.
You learn a bit along the way - what's it mean to domesticate an animal? What about domesticating a plant (The oak tree's acorns for example, are high in nutrition, but are not domesticated)?
You learn about the mysteries of Madagascar - the people there speak a form of Indonesian (even as of 1500AD), but the closest Indonesians were far away in Asia.
The book starts out in a pretty riveting way, but by the later chapters, it begins to drag. The author goes into much detail, which I wasn't necessarily interested in. Eventually I got through it, and am happy to have read it. Take a gander at the first few chapters, and dive in the rest if you feel like it. He does provide some food for thought and makes me wonder about the resources that we squander in our modern world, and about the fall of our way of life. Not coincidentally, he has another book called "Collapse" that discusses the fall of societies - I might pick that up. But first some light reading :)
When Europeans arrived in the New World, why did the Native Americans have no way of resisting them, and why could they not fight the smallpox (and why did they not infect the Europeans)?
One can answer simply - "Europeans had guns, germs, and steel, Native Americans did not." This is true, and the author digs back in history to understand how Eurasians ended up with these technologies and germs. He reaches far back in history to dicuss why the Fertile Crescent caused such a population boom, why there was more food there (and large domesticatable mammals), compared to other regions of the world.
You learn a bit along the way - what's it mean to domesticate an animal? What about domesticating a plant (The oak tree's acorns for example, are high in nutrition, but are not domesticated)?
You learn about the mysteries of Madagascar - the people there speak a form of Indonesian (even as of 1500AD), but the closest Indonesians were far away in Asia.
The book starts out in a pretty riveting way, but by the later chapters, it begins to drag. The author goes into much detail, which I wasn't necessarily interested in. Eventually I got through it, and am happy to have read it. Take a gander at the first few chapters, and dive in the rest if you feel like it. He does provide some food for thought and makes me wonder about the resources that we squander in our modern world, and about the fall of our way of life. Not coincidentally, he has another book called "Collapse" that discusses the fall of societies - I might pick that up. But first some light reading :)
posted by Jay at 3:33 AM
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