From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Mon Apr 08 2002 - 10:20:11 MDT
Dan Fabulich wrote:
> Am I crazy? Does Diamond still think agriculture was such a bad idea?
> Is that the hidden political message of his book?
Well, the book was primarily about the comparative prevalence of plant
and animal species capable of being effectively domesticated on the
various continents and how migration of domesticated species tended to
stay within latitudinal zones, but the title of the book "Guns, Germs,
and Steel" had nothing to do with that research, and seems to reference
the three ingredients of the European decimation of the New World
cultures. So the left wing leap of logic from "european predominance was
foreordained by evolution in the context of agriculture" to the
conclusion that, therefore, "agriculture is bad because it is the cause
of imperialism" isn't that hard to figure out.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:13:19 MST