Why do some societies flourish in material wealth while others can barely scrap a living? That is the kind of question Jared Diamond has been investigating for the past 30 years in his attempt to understand the roots of inequality. The answer, it turns out, has something to do with human ingenuity, but especially with serendipitous geographic and environmental phenomena that allow some civilizations to flourish while others merely survive or even go extinct. In other words, much of the answer boils down to location, location, location...In this first installment of the documentary series Guns, Germs & Steel (based on Diamond's best-selling book by the same name), we are introduced to the beginning trends in inequality (starting roughly about 13,000 years ago), when some lucky societies in the abundant land of the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East left their traditional hunting and gathering lifestyles behind and instead became involved in agriculture and the domestication of animals until the land could no longer sustain them, at which point a new chapter in human history would start and domination would be possible through guns, germs and steel.
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Ahh! Thank you. I wrote a post about this book and had forgotten its name at the time of writing. It is a fantastic book. I am a big fan of your blog, keep up the good work. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the positive feedback, Doug. Stay tuned for the rest of the episodes of this great series, and feel free to share with everyone you know :)
ReplyDeleteGood post Berto. That book really turned me on to Diamond's other works. I wonder if he has or will make a documentary based on his follow-up masterpiece, The Third Chimpanzee. Have you read it?
ReplyDeleteNo, I haven't. I've read his Why is sex fun?, though... :) I'd like to read the rest of his work soon, including Collapse.
ReplyDeleteDiamond does not give his readers the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In fact, he gives them much less. Inexcusably for an evolutionary biologist, Diamond fails to inform his readers that it is different environments that cause, via natural selection, biological differences among populations.
ReplyDeleteWhat seems to be true (from preliminary studies) is that the gene variants that were under strong selection (reached fixation) over the last 10k years are different in different clusters. That is, the way that modern people in each cluster differ, due to natural selection, from their own ancestors 10k years ago is not the same in each cluster -- we have been, at least at the genetic level, experiencing divergent evolution.
In fact, recent research suggests that 7% or more of all our genes are mutant versions that replaced earlier variants through natural selection over the last tens of thousands of years. There was little gene flow between continental clusters ("races") during that period, so there is circumstantial evidence for group differences beyond the already established ones (superficial appearance, disease resistance).
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/01/no-scientific-basis-for-race.html
Gene flow and gene isolation should certainly be accounted for, and if you're right, dear anonymous, then an easily testable prediction arises: if gene flow really does play an important causal role here, and is under the pressure of natural selection, then we should be able to compare the different population clusters you mention in your comment to their environment and the different times these clusters flourished.
ReplyDeleteI don't know the answer to this question off-hand, but my guess would be that even though there is divergent evolution taking place between clusters, it might not be enough to explain the success and subsequent failures of of some civilizations in the last 13,000 years. Although I'm open to the possibility of an empirical refutation, it seems to me that's not a significantly long timeline for genetic evolution to explain these cultural differences. Any thoughts on that?
***Although I'm open to the possibility of an empirical refutation, it seems to me that's not a significantly long timeline for genetic evolution to explain these cultural differences. Any thoughts on that? ***
ReplyDeleteOn that point I'd recommend reading Henry Harpending & Gregory Cochran's book 'The 10,000 Year Explosion'. They discuss a particular instance of a group, Ashkenazi Jews, developing a high group average level of cognitive ability.
Also, I'd recommend UC Davis economist Greg Clark's book 'A Farewell to Alm's' - discussed here by Steve Hsu.
Clark summary