Geography is destiny.
That's why Inuit are Inuit and Polynesians are Polynesians.
It is a perfectly acceptable academic strategy to ignore the research or conclusions of other historians if they are completely wrong.
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Hawaii- Done
- Thread starter doc_flavonoid
- Start date
That's why Inuit are Inuit and Polynesians are Polynesians.
It is a perfectly acceptable academic strategy to ignore the research or conclusions of other historians if they are completely wrong.
That must be why wildly different cultures from giant nearly identical land masses across Eurasia exist, right?
He also ignores himself in previous books. The reason there weren't any domesticable animals like horses to repel the Spaniards is because the Asians crossing from the land bridge in Asia ate them to extinction. He says so in another book.
IOW, it wasn't an accident of geography that there were no horses. As S.C. Gwynne explained in "Empire of the Summer Moon," when the Spaniards re-introduced horses to North America and the Commanches learned to fight on horseback, they stopped the Spaniards' advance northward.
What caused him to ignore his own earlier arguments that might've veered towards population genetics?
Yeah isn’t there also a theory gaining some traction that in the 10 or 20 years or so before Columbus fumbled his way into Hispaniola, there was a MASSIVE continental level plague of some sort that killed upwards of 90% of the pre contact Native North American population? like they have found all of this evidence of old plains “cities” that seem like they would be home to tens of thousands of Sioux or whatever. And even trippier: how successful would ANY of the first colonies have been if the native population was 10 times larger? We’d all be typing in Huron or Chumash
Collapse was an attempt to walk back the geographical determinism of Guns Germs and Steel because of the near unanimous chorus of world historians and anthropologists (some of whom went to Punahou!) who offered compelling evidence against Diamond's thesis.
The fact that early migrants across the Bering land bridge hunted the (tiny) North American horse to extinction, and that horses were not reintroduced until Spanish colonization, has no real bearing on Diamond's argument either way.
Population genetics has no bearing either - human beings are human beings.
Diamond argues that geography determines everything - that if, for instance, Hawaiians had iron ore or gold, they would have done the same thing with it the Incas did. That is of course ridiculous. He discounts nearly all human agency - religion, culture, ideology - and argues that these things are simply by products of the soil you end up on (or rock, or sand, or sea). There is so much evidence against this it is hardly worth recounting.
But yes, Diamond got a generation of lay people thinking about history - and that in itself is awesome.
The fact that early migrants across the Bering land bridge hunted the (tiny) North American horse to extinction, and that horses were not reintroduced until Spanish colonization, has no real bearing on Diamond's argument either way.
Population genetics has no bearing either - human beings are human beings.
Diamond argues that geography determines everything - that if, for instance, Hawaiians had iron ore or gold, they would have done the same thing with it the Incas did. That is of course ridiculous. He discounts nearly all human agency - religion, culture, ideology - and argues that these things are simply by products of the soil you end up on (or rock, or sand, or sea). There is so much evidence against this it is hardly worth recounting.
But yes, Diamond got a generation of lay people thinking about history - and that in itself is awesome.
Professor Diamond himself addresses the issue of geographical determinism -
"Today, no scholar would be silly enough to deny that culture, history, and individual choices play a big role in many human phenomena. Scholars don’t react to cultural, historical, and individual-agent explanations by denouncing “cultural determinism,” “historical determinism,” or “individual determinism,” and then thinking no further. But many scholars do react to any explanation invoking some geographic role, by denouncing “geographic determinism” and then thinking no further, on the assumption that all their listeners and readers agree that geographic explanations play no role and should be dismissed"
http://www.jareddiamond.org/Jared_Diamond/Geographic_determinism.html
"Today, no scholar would be silly enough to deny that culture, history, and individual choices play a big role in many human phenomena. Scholars don’t react to cultural, historical, and individual-agent explanations by denouncing “cultural determinism,” “historical determinism,” or “individual determinism,” and then thinking no further. But many scholars do react to any explanation invoking some geographic role, by denouncing “geographic determinism” and then thinking no further, on the assumption that all their listeners and readers agree that geographic explanations play no role and should be dismissed"
http://www.jareddiamond.org/Jared_Diamond/Geographic_determinism.html
Eurasian warhorses were smaller than you might think. Also, lack of domesticable animals is one of Diamond's main arguments for lack of civilizational progress relative to Europeans and their lack of disease resistance.
Why did they call Africa "The White Man's Graveyard?"
Agreed.
I think European diseases killed them.
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Finally got got by the vid. Do not recommend, 0 star experience.
Nice incidental racism from PRCD, lovely stuff.
Nice incidental racism from PRCD, lovely stuff.
You seem like you have a strong opinion on this so I’ll put the same questions to you in a different way. Are dark skin and genes for malarial resistance an advantage in the tropics?
It was a long time ago that I read the book "1491" which as I recall was about, among other things, how smallpox made it to the Americas ahead of the Euros and basically decimated the native population so that when "we" arrived what we found was one of severely reduced numbers. When I read that book in the mid 2000's it was fairly controversial but maybe it is more widely accepted now?
I was saying the documentary was good, not the effects of European diseases. I should’ve used a colon.
That’s exactly the book. Good find. I wonder if there has been much further investigation to discover if there was in fact a mass die off before the euros showed up
based on a few google searches and reading some reviews of the book it isn't doesn't seem to be currently viewed as overly controversial or disputed. it probably suffers from some of the same flaws as Gun Germs and Steel or similar books that attempt to condense long and complicated histories into easily digestible books for idiots such as myself.
These authors think an ancestor of smallpox came from north america with camels:
The origin of the variola virus - PubMed
The question of the origin of smallpox, one of the major menaces to humankind, is a constant concern for the scientific community. Smallpox is caused by the agent referred to as the variola virus (VARV), which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. In the last century, smallpox was declared...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
The strain that wiped-out the Americans definitely came from the Euros.
In my brain fogged state I read it has him saying the diseases killing off native Americans was a good thing, not that the documentary was good.