Chapter 5: History’s Haves and Have-Nots
The question is why food production developed in certain areas earlier than others. The first challenge to overcome in answering this question is how do we identify which areas food production originated in. Diamond says that domesticated plants and animals differ from their wild ancestors morphologically and we can determine where plants and animals were domesticated based on archeological findings of these differing species.
Chapter Four: Farmer Power
Let me just say, first off, I’m really sorry for anyone who has been reading this. When I left on my lengthy vacation, it was only my dad reading and I figured it would stay that way for a long while. So I thought nothing of heading off to a locale without internet connection. Stayed there for a month. And then the book I’ve been reading was in someone else’s possession for their month check-out from the library after that. I’m back. And I am determined to read these things whether there’s anyone else reading along with me or not. But I really am sorry if anyone was actually interested in following along with my summaries. I just got the book back from the local library. Diving in where I left off:
Chapter Three: Collision at Cajamarca
Diamond begins with an example by which we might understand collisions between colonizers and native peoples: the first encounter between Inca emperor Atahuallpa and Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, during which time Atahuallpa was captured and ransomed though the native troops outnumbered the Spanish by thousands.
**So I already knew this was a pretty shizzy encounter, but reading the accounts of six of the men with Pizarro really gives me even greater appreciation for how ridiculous this violence was. Even from the Spanish point of view, by today’s standards anyway, they sound ridiculous and treacherous. It’s hard sometimes to bear in mind that we need to judge those in history by the context of their time and even so… jeeze.
Chapter Two: A Natural Experiment of History
Diamond offers the history the Maori and Moriori peoples as a small scale example of environment affecting the development of societies. Both peoples were Polynesian and only colonized different islands less than a millennium before the Maori massacred the Moriori thanks to their greater experience in battle and more advanced technology and weapons. He goes on to say that Polynesia as a whole offers a “natural experiment” to study the effect of environment on societies as all the islands were colonized by the same base people from the Bismarck Archipelago. From this one(ish) people, a large number of environmentally disparate islands were settled. (As well there were no other colonists during this period because the islands were beyond the reach of most other people’s watercraft.)
Chapter One: Up to the Starting Line
Apparently there’s some debate when you go this far back between calibrated and uncalibrated radiocarbon dates. He claims the dawn of historical developments to be around 11,000 B.C. (the calibrated date, roughly 13,000 years ago) though others usually quote 9,000 B.C. (the uncalibrated date, roughly 11,000 years ago).
While I read I’ll just keep a running account of my thoughts (and I guess it might serve as a really long summary of sorts). I guess I just thought this project might someday interest someone else in that they can be general to my foot soldier. I’m doing the grunt work, slogging through the books. If you feel so inclined you can read along with me a bit. For your own edification, you may want to read some of the books yourself. But I know how busy life can get and I’m only twenty-two. So far, in my experience, it’s only gotten busier every year. So I can imagine there’s a large percentage of our population that really have trouble finding time to read all these books (and when you do have time to read books at all, who can blame you for being more drawn to your fiction at the end of long days?). So, yes, a justification for my rambling thoughts.