I have a couple of questions about Jared Diamond
and his book "Guns, Germs and Steel". I know this is pretty off-topic for a
linguistic list, but I don't know where else to ask them, and I bet some of you
have heard about this book and know enough about this subject to
evaluate his book - or at least to post your opinions.
For a general reader like me, it is very
interesting when a historical writer for once doesn't play safe, studying
details of details, but asks the big questions and tries to answer them. But I
don't know enough to judge his book, so I would like to know -
How trustworthy is he? What is his reputation in
the academic world? Is he a Greenberg among the historians? (He's not a
professional historian, he's a professor of physiology at the UCLA School of
Medicine)
Is he alone doing this? Are there other people
doing the same kind of research that one should be aware of?
A quick presentation for those who aren't familiar
with this book: "Guns, Germs and Steel" is a summary of the last 13,000
years of history. According to Diamond, people living in the different
continents of Earth had very different starting conditions after the last ice
age. He compares the plants and animals available for domestication in different
continents and his conclusion is that the differences in what was available
explains why some parts of the world have grown to dominate the others. Europe,
the Middle East and Asia were dealt a much better hand of crops and wildlife
than Australia. Because of this, civilisations grew quickly in Eurasia,
developing writing, metallurgy, etc. (while the people of Australia developed a
way of life perfectly suited to the living conditions of that continent). Maybe
I should add that his point is not to glorify or defend the way
that Europe has grown to dominate the rest of the planet.
Hakan Lindgren