That shows that poverty is something you can do something about. People have a misunderstanding that geography means environmental determinism, and that poor countries are doomed to be poor and they should just shut up and lie down and play dead. But in fact, knowledge is power. Once you know what it is that's making you poor, you can use that knowledge to make you rich. All rights reserved. Why over the past 10, years has the development of different societies proceeded at such different rates?
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Again maize, rice, and large-seeded varieties of sorghum are dismissed, along with grains that have smaller seeds but are also used in various places as staples. Diamond concedes that very old dates have been obtained for agricultural origins in China and tropical New Guinea: respectively and BC, as against BC for the Fertile Crescent. Apparently because the Chinese center does not enjoy a Mediterranean climate, and the New Guinea center is tropical, neither he argues would be as old as the Fertile Crescent.
Here he ignores the fact that vastly more research has been done in the Near East than in China, New Guinea, and various other ancient centers of domestication; and the fact that preservation conditions are much worse in the humid tropics than in the arid Near East.
Thus, overall, the argument that the Fertile Crescent was somehow "fated" to be the first center of farming and therefore of civilization, is unconvincing -- yet it is a central pillar of Diamond's theory. The third of the "ultimate" factors" that go far toward explaining "the broadest patterns of history" is diffusion.
Diamond invokes diffusion in arguments that need it: when he wants to demonstrate that the spread of some domesticate, or some technological trait, or some idea, was rapid and consequential.
He neglects diffusion when it is convenient to do so: when he wants to emphasize the supposed isolation of some region like Australia and the consequences of that isolation. As regards the rise and development of food production, Diamond's central point is that the relative similarity of the environments within Eurasia's temperate belt accounts in large part for the putatively rapid diffusion of food production throughout this region as contrasted with the rest of the world.
He seems not to notice that the agriculturally productive regions within this temperate belt are quite isolated from one another, separated by deserts and high mountains. Contrary to Diamond's theory, north-south diffusion, which generally meant diffusion between temperate and tropical regions or between temperate regions separated by a zone of humid tropics, was as important as east-west diffusion.
Diamond argues that agricultural traits will have difficulty diffusing southward and northward between midlatitude Eurasia and the African and Asian tropics because this requires movement between regions that are ecologically very different.
Hence it must follow that midlatitude crops will tend not to grow very well in humid tropical regions, and vice versa for tropical crops, because they are accustomed to different temperature and rainfall regimes and either need seasonal changes in day- length if they are midlatitude domesticates or, conversely, cannot tolerate such changes in day-length if they are low- latitude domesticates.
This argument is used by Diamond mainly to support two of his theories. One is the theory that tropical regions of the Eastern Hemisphere tended to develop later, and more slowly, than temperate Eurasia. The other is the theory that temperate regions of the Eastern Hemisphere that lie south of the tropics, notably Australia and the Cape region of South Africa, did not acquire agriculture largely because tropical regions kept them isolated from the Eurasian centers of domestication.
But the effect of the north-south "barriers" cannot have been that important. The essence of domestication is the changing of crops, by selection and other means, to make them more suitable for the human inhabitants of a region. Always this involves some changes to adapt to different planting conditions. There are, indeed, true ecological limits. But the range of potential adaptation is very wide. Most tropical regions with distinct dry and wet seasons are potentially suited for most of the major cereals grown in temperate Eurasia.
Day-length is important for some crops, notably wheat, but in most cases adaptations could, and did, remove even this limitation. After all, in early times some kinds of wheat were grown as far south as Ethiopia; rice was grown in both tropical and warm midlatitude climates; sorghum, first domesticated in Sudanic Africa, spread to midlatitude regions of Asia.
Most tropical root and tuber crops had problems spreading to regions that were cold or seasonally dry, but many of these crops, too, adapted quite nicely: think of the potato. Diamond's error here is to treat natural determinants of plant ecology as somehow determinants of human ecology. That is not good science. Diffusion is also stressed by Diamond as having been a significant factor in early world history, and some of his points are valid.
But when, in various arguments, he posits natural environmental barriers as causes of non-diffusion, or of slow diffusion, he makes numerous mistakes. Some of these as in the matter of north-south crop movements, just discussed are factual errors about the environment.
Other errors are grounded in a serious failure to understand how culture influences diffusion. All of these areas are midlatitude regions that are separated from midlatitude Eurasia by some intervening environment. Diamond devotes a lot of attention to two such areas: the Cape of Good Hope and Australia. Why did these two regions remain non-agricultural for so long? In both cases, the sought-after explanation is supposed to be a combination of barriers to diffusion and local environmental obstacles, notably relative absence of potential domesticates.
Cultural factors are ignored. The Cape of Good Hope is a zone of Mediterranean climate. What "cries out for an explanation" here is the fact that this area, according to Diamond, had the ecological potential to be a productive food-producing region, but remained a region of pastoralism until Europeans arrived.
Bantu-speaking agricultural peoples spread southward into South Africa but, according to Diamond, they stopped precisely at the edge of the Mediterranean climatic region. This region was occupied by the Khoi people who were pastoralists.
Why did the Bantu- speakers, who had invaded Khoi lands farther north, not do so in the Cape region and then plant crops there? Why did the Khoi not adopt agriculture themselves? Diamond denies, rightly, that the this had to do with any failure of intellect; the causes, he argues, were matters of environment and diffusion. The crops grown by the Bantu- speakers, here the Xhosa, were tropical, and, according to Diamond, could not cope with the winter-wet climate of the Cape region.
So the Xhosa did not spread food production to the Cape because of its Mediterranean climate. The Khoi, for their part, did not adopt agriculture because Mediterranean crops that had been domesticated north of tropical Africa could not diffuse from North Africa through the region of tropical environment and agriculture to the Cape; and because the Cape region did not have wild species suitable for domestication.
But the Khoi probably did not adopt Xhosa agriculture for quite different reasons. Almost all of the area in South Africa that the Khoi occupied before the Europeans arrived is just too dry to support rain-fed agriculture. The Khoi could have farmed in a few seasonally wet riverside areas. They must have known about the Xhosa techniques of farming some of them lived among the Xhosa.
But they chose to remain pastoralists. His idea that geography determines the wealth of a civilization is explained in Guns, Germs and Steel Episode One. Use this introduction, along with the Viewing Guide to introduce the film.
Have students view Episode One in its entirety. Pause to discuss questions from the Viewing Guide as needed. Once all students have had a chance to view Episode One and complete the Viewing Guide, facilitate a classroom discussion about the questions presented on the guide.
Encourage students to give specific examples from the program to support their ideas. Explain to students that they will now be working to learn more about how the U. Use the Guns, Germs and Steel web site section entitled Variables available at www. Using this information along with other primary sources, students will work in pairs or small groups to learn about how a specific plant or animal was introduced to the U.
Each pair or group will focus on a specific plant or animal and present their findings to the class. Using the Research Project Guidelines, have students begin work on their projects. There are also other geographical barriers to the spread of agriculture, barriers that will also come into play in the diffusion of other technologies among societies.
Such barriers as desert regions, tropical jungle, and mountains played a far more prominent role in preventing or slowing down the spread of agriculture in the Americas and Africa than in Eurasia, where the barriers are far less formidable.
Diamond calls the acquisition, timing, and spread of agriculture the ultimate cause of the world inequalities in the 15 th century, but not one of the proximate causes.
These proximate or immediate causes were the superiority of Eurasian technology, particularly their guns, steel swords and armor; the centralized political governments of Eurasian nations that allowed the marshaling of armadas of ships and armies; and the more lethal germs carried by the conquerors. How are these proximate factors related to agriculture? Diamond claims that there is an autocatalytic relationship between intensified food production, population, and societal complexity.
First, food production allows for a sedentary life-style, thus allowing for the accumulation of possessions as well as the creation of crafts. Second, intensified food production can be organized to produce a surplus, which can then be used to support a more complex division of labor as well as social stratification Thus, societal complexity can then stimulate further intensification of food production.
With population growth, Diamond maintains, wars begin to change their character as well. With intensified food production and high population densities, as with states that produce a surplus of food and have a developed division of labor , the defeated can be used as slaves or the defeated society can be forced to pay tribute to the conquerors.
During the hunting and gathering era, where population densities are low, conflict between groups often meant that the defeated group would merely move to a new range further removed from the victors.
With non-intensive food production and consequent moderate population level, there is no place for the defeated to move; in horticultural societies with little surplus, there is little advantage in keeping the defeated as slaves or in forcing the defeated area to pay tribute. The most direct line from the ultimate cause of agriculture to a proximate cause is the relationship between raising livestock and lethal germs.
Eurasian farmers were exposed to these germs from a very early time, thus many developing immunities to the diseases. Though Eurasians were mainly resistant to these diseases, they remained carriers. Thus native populations of the Americas, Australia, and Polynesia were often decimated before guns and steel were used to subjugate them. In summary, because food production was far more advanced on the Eurasian continent, there was great competition, diffusion, and amalgamation among the states that evolved on this continent.
These states became far larger in population, more resistant to the diseases carried by domesticates, more sophisticated in terms of technology, and more centralized politically than the tribes, chiefdoms, and early states they came into contact with in the New World, the Pacific Islands, Africa, and Australia. Thus, when worlds collided one barely survived. Also see Sociocultural Systems: Principles of Structure and Change to learn how his insights contribute to a fuller understanding of modern societies.
Diamond, J. Elwell, F. Sociocultural Systems: Principles of Structure and Change. Canada: Athabasca University Press. Lenski, G.
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