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To be fair to Diamond, his arguments in GG&S are bit broader in scope than just the the continental axis hypothesis. The disparity in domesticable animals betwe
by staminade 3y ago
To be fair to Diamond, his arguments in GG&S are bit broader in scope than just the the continental axis hypothesis. The disparity in domesticable animals between Eurasia and other continents always seemed more persuasive than the axial argument. Although it is true that he leans too far into determinism and discounts cultural and economical factors.
- RecycledEle 3y agoThe domestication if animals has far more to do with the humans domesticating them than the animals.
- lolinder 3y agoYou're going to need to elaborate on what exactly you mean if you make an incendiary claim like that. Jared Diamond's argument is that for an animal to be domesticated it needs to have a very specific collection of traits—tameability and ability to breed in captivity being two important ones—and that there weren't any sufficiently good candidates for domestication in the Americas, Africa, or Australia (besides the llama in South America, which they did domesticate). With which part of this argument do you disagree? What candidates would you propose for domestication in non-Eurasian continents?
- polski-g 3y agoThe only thing it needs is breedability in captivity. You can selectively breed for "tameability" over time.
- ducttapecrown 3y agoThat's not always true.
- andrewflnr 3y agoTechnically, perhaps, but maybe it takes more time than a low-tech society can afford. That's close enough to untameable for practical purposes.
- darkerside 3y agoWhy could a low tech society not afford time?
- lmm 3y agoA low tech society may not have the surplus to run a wild animal breeding programme for multiple generations without interruption.
- andrewflnr 3y agoYes, thank you, that's more precisely put.
- darkerside 3y agoI think in this theory, it wouldn't be a program so much as it is people leaving scraps behind, animals learning that humans are a beneficial food source, and a symbiotic relationship naturally developing over time (measured in centuries).
- lmm 3y agoThat's very much an example of having the animal become tameable before breeding them in captivity.
- epivosism 3y agohow long they live before reproduction, reproduction rate, edibility (while you're waiting for them to be tame), in-captivity behavior, what they eat, etc matter a lot since they are the variables going into the equation for how many 100s or thousands of years you're going to have to devote to this. Also, if they are basically useless now, most groups won't even realize there's a point to starting to tame them.
- darkerside 3y agoIt seems obvious that selection for affinity to humans would occur naturally over time, with humans being a good food source (trash, if nothing else), and animals that were proximate to humans but non threatening becoming very successful over time.
- JackFr 3y agoDoes the Norwegian rat count as having been domesticated?
- thaumasiotes 3y agoYes, people keep them as pets, play with them, etc. There are also large wild populations.
- sethammons 3y agoNot all rats are good at being pets. If they were, the bushy tailed wood rat would be in every pet store
- thaumasiotes 3y agoI can't argue with that, but the question was about Norwegian rats. The bushy-tailed wood rat isn't even in the same taxonomic family. It's just called a rat.
- int_19h 3y agoThere are many animals who have such affinity with humans, but most of them have not been successfully domesticated, so it's not that simple. And it does seem rather obvious on its face that animals exhibiting certain kinds of social behavior, for example, would more readily adapt to a symbiotic relationship with humans than others.
- runarberg 3y agoBut what about Turkeys, dogs, ducks and guinea pigs. They were also domesticated in the Americas, do they not count as well? Also why the focus on animals, some of the very best crops we have today (e.g. the potato) were originally bread in the Americas for thousands of years before contact.
- mr_toad 3y agoNone of them can pull a plow or carry a soldier.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Sakos 3y agoMy god, reading some of these comments is like pulling teeth. "But what about...", how about some of these people stop and think about their arguments first before just randomly throwing them into the open? I don't understand this form of discussion or what they hope to achieve with these ridiculously weak "aha" arguments that simply don't hold water. Is it bad faith? Bad education? Lack of self-reflection?
- somenameforme 3y agoWell I think it's safe to say that near 0% of people have read his book, and the hypothesis put forward is far from intuitive. It's also easy to see it as probably being motivated by ideology, as it falls right in line with certain social trends. So this is going to have a pretty polarizing effect. People who adopt to said ideology are going to be inclined to accept it with minimal questioning, and vice versa people who challenge said ideology are probably just going to eye roll and completely dismiss it with about as much consideration as the equal but opposite group gave it. So it would probably help if somebody compellingly laid out his hypothesis, at least as it relates to animals, while making some reasonable effort to account for the countless self evident arguments against it.
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- scubadude 3y agoGo domesticate a tiger shark ...
- eszed 3y agoOne question I've had about domesticable animals that I've never seen addressed - likely because, to be fair, it's unfalsifiable - is How many of the North American large animal species wiped out in the first waves of human settlement would eventually have been domesticable? If the answer is "some, probably" (which doesn't seem unreasonable), then continuous human habitation is a relevant (continental) factor for cultural advancement. There were horses, at least, not tremendously different morphologically from Asian species, but which (most likely) had not inherited an instinctual fear of humans.
- JackFr 3y agoAn interesting section of GG&S addresses how zebras have never been domesticated (for a number of reasons) despite superficially seeming quite similar to horses. My point is, I guess, it’s hard to know and counterfactuals with hypothetical species are probably not definitive.
- eszed 3y agoAbsolutely fair point: it is an unanswerable question. It's just... Aargh: - Africa, Australia: continuous habitation; no suitable creatures. - Europe, Asia: continuous habitation; suitable creatures. - South America: recent habitation; no suitable creatures (discounting cameloids). - North America: recent habitation; ???. It's a tantalizing, permanent un-known that just invites speculation! Nothing wrong with indulging imagination a bit, so long as we recognize that's what we're doing.
- CSMastermind 3y agoThe theories are linked. Diamond's assertion that Europeans conquered the world because they had an easier time domesticating animals makes sense if you're talking about the Americas, but not so much when talking about Africa, which was in constant contact with Europe and in theory should have been able to trade for any technology invented there. Simply saying that Africa didn't have domesticable animals isn't good enough because, certainly, they could have imported them along with other technology from Europe. The continental axis hypothesis is his answer to this. He says crops (and later animals) could be more easily moved east to west rather than north to south because the climate will change less. In his mind, this explains why Africans didn't adopt European advancements in agriculture and animal domestication. You don't need a study to debunk this theory within the context of Diamond's overall hypnosis; you need a globe and some measuring tape. Africa's east-west axis (4600m) is only 8% smaller than its north-south axis (5000m), which in turn is almost identical to Eur-Asia's (4,900m). The only time this isn't true is on a distorted map like the Mercator projection he uses in the book. Sub-Saharan Africa is not some wasteland that couldn't support these animals and crops. And this is obvious when you consider that colonial empires brought their crops to Africa without the need to fundamentally change them for the climate. Colonial holdings in Africa often produced a good chunk of the grain for their empires as a whole. Axis theories aside, Diamond is just factually wrong about the origins and timelines of domestication. Many of the crops and animals that supposedly helped Europe dominate the world were widely present in Africa centuries before European invasions. Romans explored into Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1st century BC; Turks and Arabs had established trade routes deep into Africa by the 6th century AD; the Indian Ocean, including the coast of Africa was continually interconnected through trade going back to the bronze age at least, and trade caravans across the Sahara have been recorded in ancient Egyptian records. This is covered well in Diamond in the Rough: Reflections on Guns, Germs, and Steel https://www.jstor.org/stable/24707701 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24707701 You could fill a book disproving his theories, but I'll point out one last thing: trying to explain European conquest through the lens of continents is super weird. Africa, let alone any other 'continent,' is a vast and diverse place. The idea of continents in and of itself makes less and less sense the more we learn about geography. You could as reasonably draw continental boundaries in dozens of other ways that would make more sense than the ones Diamond presents in his books.
- somenameforme 3y agoCan you offer cliff notes on what/why you found his argument persuasive? For one who has relatively little interest in reading such a book, the claim seems quite outlandish. For instance Africa has everything from monkeys to elephants, and most have been tamed. Even the common exception of zebras isn't really an exception. One can find countless examples of them being tamed to varying degrees [1], but there seems to be no large scale and competent multi-generational effort to achieve that at scale. Taming in many species is a process that happens over many decades to centuries. And when you look at other places like Russia, everything from foxes to bears have been tamed. [1] - https://www.npr.org/2014/09/20/349856240/my-little-zebra-it-might-be-legal-that-doesnt-make-it-a-good-idea https://www.npr.org/2014/09/20/349856240/my-little-zebra-it-...
- mr_toad 3y agoDomesticated means more than tamed. Domesticated means bred in captivity for so many generations that their behavior and physique has changed. You can tame a wolf, but it won’t be a dog.
- somenameforme 3y agoOf course this is true, but I'm not entirely sure of the implication? A tamed animal can be used for work, which is presumably the crux of his hypothesis?
- idiomaddict 3y agoDomesticated animals make more domesticated animals. Tamed animals make taming projects for their owners
- somenameforme 3y agoTamed animals also can generally reproduce in captivity, with exceptions being exceptions more than the rule. For instance zebras have yet to be domesticated but can be tamed, reproduce in captivity, and we've even created all sorts of hybrids since zebras also can reproduce with horses, donkeys and so on.