3 ms·

Technically I didn't say "need", but that they were hindered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_a

Technically I didn't say "need", but that they were hindered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel is one controversial book on the topic. I was thinking more in terms of raw power than agriculture: before we could develop coal-fired industry it was useful to have draught animals to carry heavy loads and drive equipment. Not an expert, but it's clearly a lack, and the correlation between variety of domesticated animals and industrialization is interesting.

tptacek 6y ago
"Why is _Guns, Germs, and Steel_ so bad?" is practically an FAQ on AskAnthropology. https://scihubtw.tw/https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1467-8330.2003.00354.x https://scihubtw.tw/https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1467-8330.2003... https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/1rzm07/what_are_some_of_the_main_anthropological/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/1rzm07/wha...
- macintux 6y ago
  I said “controversial”. However, in that entire thread, no one is saying that having large, domesticated animals wasn’t useful. I’m not saying Diamond was right about everything, I’m saying it seems self-evident that you can get farther down the technology path, faster, if you have more power available. Animals were a very important part of the power story in pre-industrial times. Where am I wrong?
- dionidium 6y ago
  I followed the second link and while I can't evaluate all the claims made there (many of which seem to be substantive), there are enough that are silly and transparently political so as to cast doubt on the project of "discrediting" his work. Stuff like this: "Arguments such as these have made him a darling of bourgeois intellectuals, who have grown tired of looking meanspirited and self-serving when they make their transparently desperate efforts to displace histories of imperialism back on its victims. They need a pseudointellectual explanation for inequality in order to sustain the bourgeois social order that guarantees their privilege. This they found in Guns, Germs and Steel." This kind of psychologizing looks pretty silly to me and I'm not sure what any of it has to do with the arguments made in the actual book.
- idlewords 6y ago
  Honestly these read like a list of political charges that accuse Diamond of saying bad things about indigenous people (which is sort of the opposite of his thesis) rather than a substantive critique of that book. Is there a critical response that goes deeper into the scientific merits of his claims? I found the book an interesting meditation on the connections between land, plants and animals, the kind of society that can form as a result, and knock-on effects from that process (like the dependence of diseases on city living). The level of hostility to this work in the linked reviews seems out of proportion to its alleged deficits.
  - tptacek 6y ago
    The AskAnthro comment isn't great, but has links to much better sources. The sci-hub cite I gave, though, isn't political. It opens by pointing out basic errors in Diamond's work --- his omission of agriculture in the Pacific Northwest, his just-so story about lack of domestication of animals in the Americas being a result of over-hunting. In fact, the Sluyter article seems to go out of its way not to accuse Diamond of disfavored politics, and focuses on its research and reasoning. You can do better on this, though; for instance, it turns out there's a whole subsection of the AskHistorians wiki covering GGS, with entries observing: * Diamond's understanding of genetic data for the human disease load during colonization is faulty * The inability of Spanish conquistadors to hold conquered territory once captured * That Diamond risibly oversimplifies the naivete of cultures like the Inca, which somehow spent centuries conquering an entire continent only to be left ignorant of the very concept of invaders (I liked this one because it referred to Diamond as "not even an anthropologist"). * That Diamond's understanding of the Inca empire as being absolutely controlled by Atahualpa and thus his overthrow --- which is also apparently rendered inaccurately in the book --- doomed the Incas... where was I with this sentence? At any rate, it's apparently not true. * That the most important conquests of Central America occurred between native powers, and that colonizers had repeated false starts during them and took root mostly after wars between indigenous people had ravaged the continent. I thought I might take a stab at summarizing everything r/AA and r/AH have to say about the book, but it'd be like summarizing Wikipedia. I own Diamond's book and have read chunks of it and remember enjoying it, but here am just reporting that among experts in these fields, it doesn't have a good reputation, even as pop science. The criticisms seem mostly procedural (and, to an extent, about turf --- Diamond's training is in hard science, not social science), not political.

tptacek 6y ago

"Why is _Guns, Germs, and Steel_ so bad?" is practically an FAQ on AskAnthropology. https://scihubtw.tw/https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1467-8330.2003.00354.x https://scihubtw.tw/https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1467-8330.2003... https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/1rzm07/what_are_some_of_the_main_anthropological/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/1rzm07/wha...

macintux 6y ago
I said “controversial”. However, in that entire thread, no one is saying that having large, domesticated animals wasn’t useful. I’m not saying Diamond was right about everything, I’m saying it seems self-evident that you can get farther down the technology path, faster, if you have more power available. Animals were a very important part of the power story in pre-industrial times. Where am I wrong?
dionidium 6y ago
I followed the second link and while I can't evaluate all the claims made there (many of which seem to be substantive), there are enough that are silly and transparently political so as to cast doubt on the project of "discrediting" his work. Stuff like this: "Arguments such as these have made him a darling of bourgeois intellectuals, who have grown tired of looking meanspirited and self-serving when they make their transparently desperate efforts to displace histories of imperialism back on its victims. They need a pseudointellectual explanation for inequality in order to sustain the bourgeois social order that guarantees their privilege. This they found in Guns, Germs and Steel." This kind of psychologizing looks pretty silly to me and I'm not sure what any of it has to do with the arguments made in the actual book.
idlewords 6y ago
Honestly these read like a list of political charges that accuse Diamond of saying bad things about indigenous people (which is sort of the opposite of his thesis) rather than a substantive critique of that book. Is there a critical response that goes deeper into the scientific merits of his claims? I found the book an interesting meditation on the connections between land, plants and animals, the kind of society that can form as a result, and knock-on effects from that process (like the dependence of diseases on city living). The level of hostility to this work in the linked reviews seems out of proportion to its alleged deficits.
- tptacek 6y ago
  The AskAnthro comment isn't great, but has links to much better sources. The sci-hub cite I gave, though, isn't political. It opens by pointing out basic errors in Diamond's work --- his omission of agriculture in the Pacific Northwest, his just-so story about lack of domestication of animals in the Americas being a result of over-hunting. In fact, the Sluyter article seems to go out of its way not to accuse Diamond of disfavored politics, and focuses on its research and reasoning. You can do better on this, though; for instance, it turns out there's a whole subsection of the AskHistorians wiki covering GGS, with entries observing: * Diamond's understanding of genetic data for the human disease load during colonization is faulty * The inability of Spanish conquistadors to hold conquered territory once captured * That Diamond risibly oversimplifies the naivete of cultures like the Inca, which somehow spent centuries conquering an entire continent only to be left ignorant of the very concept of invaders (I liked this one because it referred to Diamond as "not even an anthropologist"). * That Diamond's understanding of the Inca empire as being absolutely controlled by Atahualpa and thus his overthrow --- which is also apparently rendered inaccurately in the book --- doomed the Incas... where was I with this sentence? At any rate, it's apparently not true. * That the most important conquests of Central America occurred between native powers, and that colonizers had repeated false starts during them and took root mostly after wars between indigenous people had ravaged the continent. I thought I might take a stab at summarizing everything r/AA and r/AH have to say about the book, but it'd be like summarizing Wikipedia. I own Diamond's book and have read chunks of it and remember enjoying it, but here am just reporting that among experts in these fields, it doesn't have a good reputation, even as pop science. The criticisms seem mostly procedural (and, to an extent, about turf --- Diamond's training is in hard science, not social science), not political.