"nothing important" & "simply good luck"
Jim Bowery
"As we shall see, the peoples of northern Europe contributed nothing of
fundamental importance to Eurasian civilization until the last thousand
years; they simply had the good luck to live at a geographic location
where they were likely to receive advances (such as agriculture, wheels,
writing, and metallurgy) developed in warmer parts of Eurasia. In the
New World the cold regions at high latitude were even more of a human
backwater. The sole Native American societies to develop writing arose
in Mexico south of the Tropic of Cancer; the oldest New World pottery
comes from near the equator in South America; and the New World society
generally considered the most advanced in art, astronomy, and other
respects was the Classic Maya society of the tropical Yucatan and
Guatemala in the first millenium A.D."
-- Jared Diamond "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" p22
From the sleeve of the book:
Jared Diamond, professor of physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine, is
the author of the best selling and award-winning "The Third Chimpanzee",
about which Diane Ackerman has written: "Wonderful,... Through insight
and illumination, Jared Diamond conducts his fascinating study of our
behavior and origins with a naturalist's eye and a philosopher's cunning."
Jared Diamond began his scientific career in physiology and expanded into
evolutionary biology and biogeography. He has been elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences,
and the American Philosophical Society, and has received a MacArthur
Foundation fellowship and the Burr Award of the National Geographic
Society. He has published over 200 articles in DISCOVER, NATURAL
HISTORY, NATURE and GEO magazines.
--
The promotion of politics exterminates apolitical genes in the population.
The promotion of frontiers gives apolitical genes a route to survival.
Change the tools and you change the rules.
Gerold Firl
In article <jaboweryE...@netcom.com>, jabo...@netcom.com (Jim Bowery) writes:
|> "As we shall see, the peoples of northern Europe contributed nothing of
|> fundamental importance to Eurasian civilization until the last thousand
|> years; they simply had the good luck to live at a geographic location
|> where they were likely to receive advances (such as agriculture, wheels,
|> writing, and metallurgy) developed in warmer parts of Eurasia. In the
|> New World the cold regions at high latitude were even more of a human
|> backwater. The sole Native American societies to develop writing arose
|> in Mexico south of the Tropic of Cancer; the oldest New World pottery
|> comes from near the equator in South America; and the New World society
|> generally considered the most advanced in art, astronomy, and other
|> respects was the Classic Maya society of the tropical Yucatan and
|> Guatemala in the first millenium A.D."
|>
|> -- Jared Diamond "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" p22
Diamond is great, but he does overstate his case for rhetorical
purposes. From the largest global perspective, there have been four
great culture groups on earth: china, india, the middle east, and the
west. Diamond correctly identifies the middle east (including egypt,
the fertile crescent, and iran) as the first civilization, but all
four have made unique and significant contributions (india less so
than the other three).
As william macneil argued in _rise of the west_, one of the main
reasons for western success has been our ability to learn from
others. Diamond goes to great pains to puncture inflated western
jingoism, but methinks he doth protest too much. In fact, the
greatest western contributions can, in many ways, be traced
precisely to our retention of primitive cultural traits associated
with the non-civilized hunter-gatherer and nomadic-pastoral cultures.
While middle-eastern civilizations were evolving organizational
systems based upon the need for large-scale irrigation and flood
control ("hydraulic despotism"), the indo-europeans were still
nomadic pastoralists. The people of the mid-east and northern china
had to subsume individual freedom in the name of flood control, but
the west was able to develop a civilization which never entirely lost
the anarchic liberty of the steppes. How much of that was due to the
material necessity of decentralized rainfall agriculture vs. river
irrigation, and how much was caused by a cultural reaction
experienced by indo-european "barbarians" when they first encountered
the abject peonage of the hydraulic empires? It's an interesting
question. I'm still looking into it, but it appears that elements of
both were involved.
But getting back to diamond, his claim regarding the "people of
northern europe" must be seen as disengenious. The IE people of
northern europe weren't in northern europe (probably) when the first
civilizations were built, but they did contribute significantly. They
were largely responsible for the creation of vedic culture in india,
probably domesticated the horse, and may well have invented the
wheel. The hallstadt celts were early pioneers in the technology of
iron. A lot is still unknown regarding the interaction of the early
IE peoples with both middle eastern and chinese civilization.
The non-IE people of old europe are even less understood. The great
megalithic structures of northern europe appear to predate those of
the mediteranean. The processes of invention and diffusion which
resulted in the erection of those incredible structures, and the
amazing level of astronomical knowledge they reveal, is also poorly
understood. lets not close the book on those poor savages just yet.
--
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Disclaimer claims dat de claims claimed in dis are de claims of meself,
me, and me alone, so sue us god. I won't tell Bill & Dave if you won't.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=---- Gerold Firl @ ..hplabs!hp-sdd!geroldf