BookTalk.org

I haven't forgotten about the book--really. I ran into something called an ethics book for counselors and psychotherapists and have had to devote some time at the kitchen table trying to focus attention on it. It's for work, 'nuff said.

It's a good thumbnail of human species development D. gives in "To the Starting Line." He wants to get us to the launch pad for his theory, so he sets up the human world as it was around 11,000 BC and asks if there are any clues as yet to why the continents developed as they did. He concludes that there wouldn't have been enough clues at that time; if we were to guess based on available information, we would get the 'wrong' conclusions. We might think that Australia/New Guinea would be the first pioneers.

I was impressed again by the ability of the fairly recent homo sapiens to change the environment. D. believes, along with many others, that extinctions of megafauna in the Americas and Australia/New Guinea were the result of humans killing all of these unwary animals. In the case of Australia, every one of the large mammals was driven to extinction, meaning that none would later be available for domestication, which had dramatic consequences for world history. It's ironic that the bounty that the 'American' hunters found meant that they would use up the resource and handicap their later development by leaving them more vulnerable to marauders from across the sea.

There is also evidence of other ecological change brought on by hunter/gatherers, mostly from the strategic use of fire. Parenthetically, the book by Charles Mann titled 1491, comes to mind. A jacket blurb calls it "Provocative...A Jared Diamond-like volley that challenges prevailing thinking about global development." Another blurb goes, "Our concept of pure wilderness untouched by grubby human hands must be jettisoned." I've had the book for some time...maybe I'll now get around to reading it.

I haven't forgotten either - between the beautiful weather here in Virginia and family visiting for the holiday I've been occupied. I promise to be back on track by this evening.

My daughter brought up an interesting piece of information that fits right in with Chap. 1. She told me that one way that biologist search for the geographic origin of an organism is by looking for the location that has the greatest genetic diversity. For humans, apparently, the greatest genetic diversity occurs in Africa. This fact adds support to modern humans originating in Africa. I also wanted to point out Diamond's mention at the bottom of p.40 and onto the top of p.41 Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals as a mini example of his theory. He says there is no evidence of hybridization and indicated that Cro-Magnons out did the Neanderthal. In the past year I've read there is evidence that there are indicators there is genetic evidence of Neanderthal DNA in modern humans. If this is the case, it may not break Diamonds case; I only bring it up so we can keep track of what holds water and what does not. And the question will be do we have we a flood or a drip.

New York Times 7/5/2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/scien ... rthal.html

Neanderthals mated with some modern humans after all and left their imprint in the human genome, a team of biologists has reported in the first detailed analysis of the Neanderthal genetic sequence. The biologists, led by Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, have been slowly reconstructing the genome of Neanderthals, the stocky hunters that dominated Europe until 30,000 years ago, by extracting the fragments of DNA that still exist in their fossil bones. Just last year, when the biologists first announced that they had decoded the Neanderthal genome, they reported no significant evidence of interbreeding.
Scientists say they have recovered 60 percent of the genome so far and hope to complete it. By comparing that genome with those of various present day humans, the team concluded that about 1 percent to 4 percent of the genome of non-Africans today is derived from Neanderthals. But the Neanderthal DNA does not seem to have played a great role in human evolution, they said.

Guns, Germs and Steel was published in 1997, fourteen years ago. There have been big advances in human genetic mapping since then.

A book I found immensely illuminating on the human story was Out Of Eden - The Peopling of the World by Professor Stephen Oppenheimer.
A summary is at http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/steph ... eading.php

A few comments by Diamond suggested that some more recent findings were more uncertain when he wrote. Especially the controversy over whether the world was peopled by a single exodus from Africa or by multiple waves of migration.

The website The Bradshaw Foundation contains very simple pictorial explanations at a page called The Journey of Mankind of what the DNA evidence says about the dating of the human departure from Africa and the slow migrations to fill the earth. One intriguing factor here is the 21,000 year precessional cycle of glaciation, with interglacials allowing migration into cold areas, and glacial periods, when the sea was more than 100 meters lower, opening up land bridges such as the Bering Strait, the mouth of the Red Sea, Bass Strait and the English Channel.

Really good website. Thanks. Was amazed to discover that Australia was populated before Northern Europe? Or did I just see it wrong. Think I might dip my toe (carefully) into a non fiction discussion.

heledd wrote:Really good website. Thanks. Was amazed to discover that Australia was populated before Northern Europe? Or did I just see it wrong. Think I might dip my toe (carefully) into a non fiction discussion.

You can jump right in & get wet--no worries here

About the updated information Robert steered us to, it will be interesting to see if this and other research done in the past 14 years since publication of GG & S will put a crimp in Diamond's theory of the outline of history. It doesn't seem to thus far, but maybe I'm not fully aware. I know that Diamond favors the late-migration theory of humans to the Americas, whereas others think the evidence is strong for considerably earlier arrival. But either way, the environment was decisive in determining that it would not be the native Americans who would look across the seas to expand their domains.

DWill wrote: About the updated information Robert steered us to, it will be interesting to see if this and other research done in the past 14 years since publication of GG & S will put a crimp in Diamond's theory of the outline of history. It doesn't seem to thus far, but maybe I'm not fully aware. I know that Diamond favors the late-migration theory of humans to the Americas, whereas others think the evidence is strong for considerably earlier arrival. But either way, the environment was decisive in determining that it would not be the native Americans who would look across the seas to expand their domains.

Here is my impression from watching the National Geo Special and skimming the book: I think his basic premise is correct. However, he tries to pull in too many other details that are unnecessary to his argument and in the end may detract from the whole work because like the example of the Neanderthal he may have prove to be incorrect or poor examples because of new scientific information.

I don't know who has read to the end of the section, but I'll pose what seems to me the obvious question. If we take as reliable the model that Diamond presents in the Maoris and the Morioris, do we have to conclude that subsistence is entirely dependent on geography (broadly considered, to include the six variables* he lists in Chap. 2)? If we do, does it also follow that culture itself results from the kind of subsistence that geography dictates? How the two peoples, originally from the same culture, fed themselves led to crucial differences in their cultures. This could all be said to be true only under the experimental conditions that Diamond says the Polynesian Islands offer. Once we have contacts from other cultures, we lose control of the variables. We have importation of non-native plants and animals and the influence of other religious beliefs and customs.

I wonder at what point the culture becomes something that by itself influences whether a people will adjust their means of subsistence. I'm thinking again of the example in Collapse, in which the European colonizers of Greenland didn't take advantage of food from the sea or of other native means of hunting. Their culture, not geography, dictated to them the terms of their survival as a colony. We also know that the problem of world hunger relief can be more complicated than getting calories to hungry people. Even though hunger is present, what a culture recognizes as food often needs to be considered first.

*The six variables are island climate, geological type, marine resources, area, terrain fragmentation, and isolation.

Thanks, DW for your last post. Now that is something to chew on while I clean my garage.

It’s unfortunate that Diamond, using totally subjective evidence, states that New Guineans are ‘more intelligent’ than the average American or European.
He reasons that this may be because New Guinean children (and by implication children of other developing countries) don’t spend their time in passive entertainment but spend their waking hours ‘doing something, such as talking or playing with other children’. This may be the case for New Guinean children, but it is well documented that for many children in the developing world, work starts at a very early age. This work can often be very tedious, and actually prevents children from playing.
As to his assertion that American and European children are made duller by their passive lifestyles, I would point out that most of these children are literate, and through easy access to tv and newspapers, have a wide knowledge of the world and different cultures – two of the factors that Diamond found important in the success of small Spanish forces subjugating huge kingdoms in South America.