From: Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Sun Apr 07 2002 - 17:45:22 MDT
Dan Clemmensen wrote:
> Indeed. In fact there is a very good book on this subject:
> "Guns, Germs, and Steel"
> The Author's name ..... Jared Diamond
Well, don't I feel like an idiot now. ;)
I never would have realized that the guy who wrote this article is the
same guy who wrote _Guns, Germs and Steel_
http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/anthro/learning/lifeways/hg_ag/worst_mistake.html
The book, I felt, took pains to avoid making moral claims about the
developments he described. But maybe I just overlooked them.
This article seems juvenile in comparison. Like, this is the sort of
article Diamond might have written as a freshman and which would have
developed into an objective book-length thesis years later.
He did tend to slide in editorial comments about how clever
hunter-gatherers can be, but it seemed to me these appeared only to
dispel any arguments from racism as to why things happened one way
rather than another.
Am I crazy? Does Diamond still think agriculture was such a bad idea?
Is that the hidden political message of his book?
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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