• In total there are 10 users online :: 0 registered, 0 hidden and 10 guests (based on users active over the past 60 minutes)
    Most users ever online was 789 on Tue Mar 19, 2024 5:08 am

GG & S 2: The Rise & Spread of Food Production

#4: Sept. - Oct. 2002 (Non-Fiction)
User avatar
giselle

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
Almost Awesome
Posts: 900
Joined: Tue Oct 21, 2008 2:48 pm
15
Has thanked: 123 times
Been thanked: 203 times

Re: GG & S 2: The Rise & Spread of Food Production

Unread post

heledd wrote:I can understand why crops find it easier to move along at the same latitude, but I don't see why this should apply to people and livestock. Prehistoric man is known to have had several routes across the Sahara desert, probably for trade. During the middle ages, there were trade routes linking Egypt to Ethiopia and across to Western Africa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Saharan_trade
You're raising the question of 'trade' as a significant factor in development and I've had this in mind too. I'm not sure how Diamond will deal with trade because it introduces the notion that production (particularly food but could be applied more broadly for other materials) is not the only way in which humans can obtain the necessities of survival, prosper and develop surplus. Trade is the other significant way. People have been traders for a very long time and some groups have done very well. Also, some trade goods originated from hunting-gathering not from farming. An example would special stone, like obsidian, which is incredibly sharp and is an amazing stone for weapons and tools. The important knowledge is where to find special materials like this and then how to trade them for other goods, food etc.

I'm skeptical about Diamond's claim that hunter gatherers are at such a huge competitive disadvantage to farmers. Farming is subject to huge risks ... crop failure, soil exhaustion, flood, overpopulation, war and so on. So much is invested in a patch of ground and there are so many uncontrollable factors.
DWill wrote: Did anybody catch Diamond's error in "How to Make an Almond"? I won't come down on him too hard for this, but on p. 117 he talks about wading into a "thorny thicket" of strawberry plants! Obviously, his "berry-picking days" are long behind him and he has forgotten that strawberries are ground-huggers that probably have never been thorny.

Yes, I guess he means raspberries? Maybe mixing stawberries and raspberries is like mixing cauliflower and broccolli, which happens commonly enough I think .. :mrgreen:
User avatar
DWill

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6966
Joined: Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:05 am
16
Location: Luray, Virginia
Has thanked: 2262 times
Been thanked: 2470 times

Re: GG & S 2: The Rise & Spread of Food Production

Unread post

I believe he accounts for trade, in the sense that the areas that didn't originate the food production package of the Fertile Crescent, but who ended up with it later, had to get it somehow. It could have been that food producers moved into the areas, but it also would have happened that people who didn't have the package received it from the food producers in a trade-like process.

Giselle, it was also my first impression that Diamond saw food production as such an obvious advantage over hunting-gathering, that any group that was exposed to it would see the light and abandon its means of sustenance. But in "To Farm or Not to Farm," he tells us that is fact it's not so clear-cut that farming is a better way of life for people. For example, studies have shown that h-g people may need to spend less time and labor on providing for themselves than do village people who farm. The latter may also be less well-fed, on lower-quality protein. The decision of how to feed the population is complex, but it depends basically on the estimation of the amount of work it will take to get the job done. Then other factors enter in as well, such as cultural beliefs that hunting-gathering is what people were put on earth to do. The mythology may be heavily weighted toward retaining the old ways, which is why Diamond says that in no area is the transition thought to have been sudden. The transition is almost complete now, worldwide. But it doesn't appear that "progress" is necessarily the label to put on it.
User avatar
DWill

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6966
Joined: Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:05 am
16
Location: Luray, Virginia
Has thanked: 2262 times
Been thanked: 2470 times

Re: GG & S 2: The Rise & Spread of Food Production

Unread post

The last chapter in this section, "Spacious Skies and Tilted Axes," is important for Diamond's theory. He needs to account for not just the rise of food production, but the transfer of it to other, non-originating, areas that ended up exercising dominance. I wonder if that alone constitutes a challenge to his theory; I mean that since the original areas of food production didn't end up on top, but rather that distinction went to areas with a shorter history, what additional ingredients might explain why the Spanish were able to overwhelm the Incas (for example)? Diamond has a later chapter explaining what went "wrong" to prevent China, one of the earliest food producers, from coming to the fore. I'll be interested to hear what he has to say.

No doubt the large east-west expanse of the Eurasian land mass helped to spread the Fertile Crescent food package over great distances. Diamond, however, cites several exceptions to the "east-west is good, north-south is bad" rule that detracts a bit from the power of that principle.

I think that, regarding the spread of the plant and animal suites, we need to understand that the geographical barriers weren't ones that prevented the movement of people, but prevented the success of agriculture in those areas, making it difficult for the crops to jump the barriers to areas that might have been more conducive to growing these crops. These people were no longer nomadic, so they weren't into traveling to other areas just to find food.
User avatar
giselle

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
Almost Awesome
Posts: 900
Joined: Tue Oct 21, 2008 2:48 pm
15
Has thanked: 123 times
Been thanked: 203 times

Re: GG & S 2: The Rise & Spread of Food Production

Unread post

DWill wrote:Giselle, it was also my first impression that Diamond saw food production as such an obvious advantage over hunting-gathering, that any group that was exposed to it would see the light and abandon its means of sustenance. But in "To Farm or Not to Farm," he tells us that is fact it's not so clear-cut that farming is a better way of life for people. For example, studies have shown that h-g people may need to spend less time and labor on providing for themselves than do village people who farm. The latter may also be less well-fed, on lower-quality protein. The decision of how to feed the population is complex, but it depends basically on the estimation of the amount of work it will take to get the job done. Then other factors enter in as well, such as cultural beliefs that hunting-gathering is what people were put on earth to do. The mythology may be heavily weighted toward retaining the old ways, which is why Diamond says that in no area is the transition thought to have been sudden. The transition is almost complete now, worldwide. But it doesn't appear that "progress" is necessarily the label to put on it.
Thanks for that, DWill. I do feel that in the early chapters JD's argument was biased toward farming production as more efficient without looking critically at what makes up farming in terms of land use, environmental impact and as you point out, the quality aspects of food production through farming. But I doubt that the farmers of thousands of years ago spent much time reflecting on these matters unless the impact of their activity forced them too. And likely they just saw the h-g's fate as a small price to pay to achieve their objectives, if they bothered to think about it at all.

I think he does a good job in the Farm or not to Farm chapter of dealing with farming and h-g more fairly. He also highlights the chicken and egg argument about food production and population growth. To the extent that one believes that farming and the resulting food production fostered population growth, then it is clearly a basic factor in wiping out the hunter gatherer way of life. There is nothing like too many people to make hunting unproductive, inefficient and to eventually wipe out game. With all the stuff that people and communities bring with them (habitat destruction, fences, guns, fear), the h-g's didn't stand a chance. I would like to mention fishing as one activity that is 'h-g' and is still quite active today and a major industry in many countries. Perhaps it survived as a relic of h-g because it is water based and so the competition with farming is not so head-on. I'll read on to see if JD covers this topic.
User avatar
DWill

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6966
Joined: Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:05 am
16
Location: Luray, Virginia
Has thanked: 2262 times
Been thanked: 2470 times

Re: GG & S 2: The Rise & Spread of Food Production

Unread post

giselle wrote:But I doubt that the farmers of thousands of years ago spent much time reflecting on these matters unless the impact of their activity forced them too. And likely they just saw the h-g's fate as a small price to pay to achieve their objectives, if they bothered to think about it at all.

I think he does a good job in the Farm or not to Farm chapter of dealing with farming and h-g more fairly. He also highlights the chicken and egg argument about food production and population growth. To the extent that one believes that farming and the resulting food production fostered population growth, then it is clearly a basic factor in wiping out the hunter gatherer way of life. There is nothing like too many people to make hunting unproductive, inefficient and to eventually wipe out game. With all the stuff that people and communities bring with them (habitat destruction, fences, guns, fear), the h-g's didn't stand a chance. I would like to mention fishing as one activity that is 'h-g' and is still quite active today and a major industry in many countries. Perhaps it survived as a relic of h-g because it is water based and so the competition with farming is not so head-on. I'll read on to see if JD covers this topic.
I think it's key to envision how the transition would actually have happened--so slowly that it would not be noticed, especially for those groups who originated food production. They would have had no conscious idea of what they were doing. Even for h-g groups that made contact with food producers, the transition might not have been a conscious one, since the contacted group probably would have been in transition, too, still hanging on to some h-g ways. Certain ways of getting food would just have seemed advantageous, whether those involved hunting or growing plants in gardens. One theory Diamond mentions is that early gardens were like insurance policies for h-g groups, in case of poor hunting.

That's a good point about fishing as a surviving big-time hunting activity. Maybe as the oceans become more and more depleted, fish farming will displace the hunting of wild fish.

Diamond uses words such as 'primitive' and 'advanced,' but sometimes he puts these in quotation marks. Being quite familiar with some h-g peoples (though perhaps these aren't 'pure' h-g groups), he seems to be aware that civilization is bought at a price. We don't have to subscribe to 'a noble savage' view in order to reflect on the evils, as well as what seem the benefits, of our civilization. H-g life might have been in some variations 'nasty, poor, brutish, and short,' but so can modern life be this way for many.
User avatar
giselle

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
Almost Awesome
Posts: 900
Joined: Tue Oct 21, 2008 2:48 pm
15
Has thanked: 123 times
Been thanked: 203 times

Re: GG & S 2: The Rise & Spread of Food Production

Unread post

DWill wrote: That's a good point about fishing as a surviving big-time hunting activity. Maybe as the oceans become more and more depleted, fish farming will displace the hunting of wild fish.

Diamond uses words such as 'primitive' and 'advanced,' but sometimes he puts these in quotation marks. Being quite familiar with some h-g peoples (though perhaps these aren't 'pure' h-g groups), he seems to be aware that civilization is bought at a price. We don't have to subscribe to 'a noble savage' view in order to reflect on the evils, as well as what seem the benefits, of our civilization. H-g life might have been in some variations 'nasty, poor, brutish, and short,' but so can modern life be this way for many.
If we ever learn how to manage fish stocks, the wild fishery might go on to great things. I hope so, wild fish tastes better than farmed fish! I found it interesting that JD talks about the Japanese tradition of raising and slaughtering grizzly bears but did not mention that Japan is one of the greatest fishing nations of the world. At some points, I think he leaves out obvious facts because they don't support his argument.

I think there is adequate evidence to suggest that the farming life can be 'nasty, poor, brutish and short' as well .. it may have been the cradle of our modern civilization but there were many pour sods along the way who paid a big price. It's hard to imagine what it would have been like to be amoung the first humans in an unoccupied area and somehow survive ... it takes time and energy and a huge amount of work to clear land and make a farm productive especially with rudimentary tools. So they must have relied on hunting-gathering initially.

I found the Spacious Skies chapter unconvincing. I'm sure that similiar conditions at similar latitudes does mean that crops are more likely to do well, but there are so many other significant factors as JD admits at the end of the chapter. Altitude is a big one. Even a casual observer can see that crops that are doing well in a lowland area and possibly into the foothills of a mountain range quickly fade out with rising altitude. And rainfall often varies with altitude, soil conditions, winds .. I just think its a huge leap to attribute so much to latitude and continental axis.

Just an aside but JD's focus on the Pacific made me think of the travel and migration of Polynesians over huge distances where the Melanesians did not migrate in this fashion even though these people (as JD points out) were of the same stock originally. In fact the Melanesians were quite the opposite, generally staying within one valley, island or other defined area hence the survival of so many unique languages.
User avatar
DWill

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6966
Joined: Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:05 am
16
Location: Luray, Virginia
Has thanked: 2262 times
Been thanked: 2470 times

Re: GG & S 2: The Rise & Spread of Food Production

Unread post

giselle wrote: If we ever learn how to manage fish stocks, the wild fishery might go on to great things. I hope so, wild fish tastes better than farmed fish! I found it interesting that JD talks about the Japanese tradition of raising and slaughtering grizzly bears but did not mention that Japan is one of the greatest fishing nations of the world. At some points, I think he leaves out obvious facts because they don't support his argument.

I think there is adequate evidence to suggest that the farming life can be 'nasty, poor, brutish and short' as well .. it may have been the cradle of our modern civilization but there were many pour sods along the way who paid a big price. It's hard to imagine what it would have been like to be amoung the first humans in an unoccupied area and somehow survive ... it takes time and energy and a huge amount of work to clear land and make a farm productive especially with rudimentary tools. So they must have relied on hunting-gathering initially.

I found the Spacious Skies chapter unconvincing. I'm sure that similiar conditions at similar latitudes does mean that crops are more likely to do well, but there are so many other significant factors as JD admits at the end of the chapter. Altitude is a big one. Even a casual observer can see that crops that are doing well in a lowland area and possibly into the foothills of a mountain range quickly fade out with rising altitude. And rainfall often varies with altitude, soil conditions, winds .. I just think its a huge leap to attribute so much to latitude and continental axis.

Just an aside but JD's focus on the Pacific made me think of the travel and migration of Polynesians over huge distances where the Melanesians did not migrate in this fashion even though these people (as JD points out) were of the same stock originally. In fact the Melanesians were quite the opposite, generally staying within one valley, island or other defined area hence the survival of so many unique languages.
I think I'm not getting your point about JD not mentioning fisheries, giselle, I mean as far as his central theory is concerned.

JD seems to do a solid job of presenting how almost all of us shed our hunter-gatherer ways and became settled folks dependent on agricultural surplus. It was truly evolutionary, though food production is sometimes called a revolution in human society. It was almost glacially slow. I share your feelings about the loopholes in the "Tilted Axes" chapter. To his credit, JD brings up the exceptions to his rule, but these do appear to water down the force of the east-west dominance in Eurasia. I was skipping ahead to the chapter titled "The Future of Human History as a Science," and from reading that I concluded that JD would have been wise if, right off the bat, he had told us what his book attempts to do and what it doesn't. In that chapter, he brings in the variations of history caused by culture, by the influence of extraordinary individuals, and by mere chance, all of which begins to make it clearer that JD is attempting an explanation of human history on the very widest scale. He's giving us the view from 25 miles above the earth, not the near view that shows us where our swimming pool is. He therefore may seem to be backing off in that late chapter, acknowledging that human history, looked at as a science, will never be close to physics in its precision, and that his theory can be only a general one. But scientific methods can be applied to understand history better, and this I think he himself does in the book.

I'm going to post a little about the criticisms of the book soon. The most telling one in my view is that the book often reads like a "Just So" story, in the vein of "How the Leopard Got His Spots." Why did China, with all of its early advantages, not lead the modern world in place of Europe? Well, it got to the point where its main strength--geographic simplicity and political unity--became a hindrance. It went from "just right" to "too hot," in Goldilocks terms. Europe, on the other hand, built up to the "just right" level of fragmentation that fostered innovation through competition and held it long enough to have its way in the world. It's clear that had China actually maintained its lead, all of its supposed weaknesses could have been counted as its strengths and that Europe's fragmentation would have counted against it. In other words, this particular methodology of Diamond's suffers from easy reversibility and is much too convenient. There are times in the book when Diamond might have been better off saying, "Dunno, but here's just one way we could look at this problem."
Last edited by DWill on Fri Dec 16, 2011 10:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
giselle

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
Almost Awesome
Posts: 900
Joined: Tue Oct 21, 2008 2:48 pm
15
Has thanked: 123 times
Been thanked: 203 times

Re: GG & S 2: The Rise & Spread of Food Production

Unread post

I appreciate your points DWill. My only point on fisheries is that I think it is a clear and substantial example of a surviving 'hunting-gathering' activity that has impacted lives and shaped socieites on every continent over millenia and it has not been wiped out by the conversion to the 'settled' life of farming. I acknowledge that it may be wiped out be other factors, like mismanagement of resources. I have also noted that JD seems to make statements then modify or even back away from them later in the book. He does not provide footnotes and specific references.

I recognize that JD is operating at 25,000 feet (or higher), which is necessary when trying to explain a history of many millenia encompassing an entire planet with all its diversity. And this is fine, but the limitation is that details that might have momentous importance and impact are below the radar.

With regards to your comments on the 'just so' criticism, very interesting. In addition to your comments, I would observe that history is not over, it is being written every day. For example, we may see in our lifetimes the next cycle of world power shifting and China reclaims its long lost position of dominance and Europe recede to a minor power. Would the roots of this change (were it to happen) be found in guns, germs and steel or an updated list of root causes?
User avatar
DWill

1H - GOLD CONTRIBUTOR
BookTalk.org Hall of Fame
Posts: 6966
Joined: Thu Jan 31, 2008 8:05 am
16
Location: Luray, Virginia
Has thanked: 2262 times
Been thanked: 2470 times

Re: GG & S 2: The Rise & Spread of Food Production

Unread post

giselle wrote:I appreciate your points DWill. My only point on fisheries is that I think it is a clear and substantial example of a surviving 'hunting-gathering' activity that has impacted lives and shaped socieites on every continent over millenia and it has not been wiped out by the conversion to the 'settled' life of farming. I acknowledge that it may be wiped out be other factors, like mismanagement of resources. I have also noted that JD seems to make statements then modify or even back away from them later in the book. He does not provide footnotes and specific references.

I recognize that JD is operating at 25,000 feet (or higher), which is necessary when trying to explain a history of many millenia encompassing an entire planet with all its diversity. And this is fine, but the limitation is that details that might have momentous importance and impact are below the radar.

With regards to your comments on the 'just so' criticism, very interesting. In addition to your comments, I would observe that history is not over, it is being written every day. For example, we may see in our lifetimes the next cycle of world power shifting and China reclaims its long lost position of dominance and Europe recede to a minor power. Would the roots of this change (were it to happen) be found in guns, germs and steel or an updated list of root causes?
Fishing is an interesting example where a major food source--maybe the most important of all, worldwide--comes straight from non-domesticated sources. It does seem that JD should have mentioned this activity at some point, if only to anticipate objections and try to explain how fishing doesn't alter his theory of continental development. During the period that JD is concerned with, the 13,000 years before about 1500, I would think that fishing would have provided mainly subsistence but not the potential to rack up food surpluses that grain and livestock provided. When industrial methods of catching fish and storing them became available to fisherman, that changed things. But it had to wait until relatively modern times. Fishing as we know it today is also done by settled people, even though they may travel far out to sea to find their prey.

Diamond wrote the book in the early 90s. That timeframe provides a perspective on the point you raise about the balance of power (economic/military) shifting. Diamond points to the rise to dominance of Japan. Yet even at the time of his writing Japan was beginning a long economic slide that has left it today quite a ways behind the status that was being predicted for it. China has taken over the role of up-and-coming economic behemoth. But as to your doubt about the roots of this change lying in the China of 8,000 years ago, you and Diamond disagree on that. He does believe that the advantages gained by the early food producers have generally extended even into the present time. The major exception he mentions is the Fertile Crescent itself, where the combination of somewhat fragile ecological conditions and careless over-exploitation by humans, removed the economic heart of that region. He does mention the danger to China of the same environmental collapse happening.
User avatar
Saffron

1F - BRONZE CONTRIBUTOR
I can has reading?
Posts: 2954
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 8:37 pm
15
Location: Randolph, VT
Has thanked: 474 times
Been thanked: 399 times
United States of America

Re: GG & S 2: The Rise & Spread of Food Production

Unread post

I've not given up on this discussion, just fallen behind. I will be sitting in a doctor's office waiting room tomorrow afternoon and I promise to make good use of that time. I'll be back on board tomorrow evening. Until then....
Post Reply

Return to “Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies - by Jared Diamond”