Passionate of history and of history in particular technical and societies, as well as botanical, "From among the companies linégalité" my appeared an interesting topic.
What a shock ... what ... what uneasiness concern also when we think of the reputation of the author and his Pulitzer prize Certainly, large companies handling the masses do not belong to the past.
This book should be read in two stages, the first time, to understand that lon can be dazzled by the style, but also impressed with the rich content and delivered in "hodgepodge" likely to impress especially if one is little or historian.
Undeniably a welter like a hamburger, the meat is a reassembly of all kinds of good or less good piece mixed together. Louvrage then resume with a clear head, notebook in hand, checking scrupulously in solid academic research and publications, all that memory seems farfetched or totally wrong and taking notes as you.
Finally, we can not be queffondré.
Undeniably, Jared Diamond writes brilliantly and has extensive historical and scientific culture, without which such a book would have been impossible, but by way of manipulation of historical realities, it is hard to beat: fully or partially false facts, omissions, interpretations, distortions, contradictions
Amazon for comment, so you have some sort, I would not stay on such historical errors and misinterpretations concerning the Vikings of Greenland lIle or Easter, it was done beautifully in "Questionning Collapse," a book that it would translate emergency.
Jai therefore try to sort a few questions just to keep a minimum:
1 / The trial in good standing of Europeans
To read Jared Diamond, was the impression that Europeans Europes (strain) have always been there, at least for tens of thousands of years and that they never invented anything Nont but limited themselves to copy inventions made by other people in other regions of the world, particularly in the famous area of the Fertile Crescent and the steppes north of the Caucasus
The real question is: who inhabited these regions, there are 7000 or 8000 years Back then the great animal and plant domestication? this debate is far from closed ...
There was undeniably Semitic populations that are then dispersed in all the Middle East and on all edges of the Mediterranean.
But the historical linguistic data (old as recent research) give Indo European origin lAnatolie North Caucasus and from where they would have started to spread through progressive and successive waves séchelonnant years between 8000 and -500 years approximately, reaching some just Europe, and India, where they have replaced the pre-existing populations especially by male lines.
These Indo-European populations brought with them lélevage, including the horse probably domesticated in the steppe, metalworking and Agriculture. Note that the latest research on the domestication of wheat will fall over it between the Tigris and Euphrates but in Anatolia.
Paleogenetic's research paléolinguistique intersect these data since lAnatolie and the Caucasus would also be the original place of the most common human haplogroups in Europe currently. These populations would largely be substituted for the Paleolithic and Mesolithic European populations, a small portion have been assimilated by interbreeding, particularly through the female lines.
While the Europeans, the descendants of shabby copiers or descendants of brilliant inventors? much data is err on the side of the inventors awesome
A very serious site visit "Eupedia" that makes regular points, accessible even to non-scientists on the state of genetic material in research of human populations and paleo-genetic or very good very recent book by Jean Chaline, biologist and director of research at CNRS: Genealogy and genetics. In this regard, it is interesting that the story is more a case of scientists, geneticists, physicists, chemists, biologists ... Historians without training and knowledge in these areas are more "dropped ".
Despite fanatically academics (notably France) recite the creeds of the doctrinaire Marxist and especially deserve to be nominated for the award "Lysenko", there are a number of objective historians.
Here are a few to discover: Sergeant Bernard "The Indo-European, history, languages and myths," Jean Manco "Ancestral Journeys: The Peopling of Europe from the First to the Vikings Venturers" or for those versed in historical linguistics, David W Anthony "The horse, the wheel and language (how bronze-age riders from the eurasian steppes shaped the modern world)." Also a must, Yaroslav Lebedynsky "The Indo-Europeans, facts, discussions and solutions" and all of a series of books on this exciting author steppe peoples of origin of the Indo-Europeans.
2 / The disappearance of mammoths, total liability lhomo sapiens or partial?
Our responsibility in the massacre of mammoths, woolly rhinos and other dune general, i tend to adhere to the ideas of Theodore Monod who was present case of the 6th human catastrophe, this is to say that he regarded with a certain lucidity, that our species was in the process of causing the sixth mass extinction of living species since the beginning of the primary era.
Now Jared Diamond goes far too quickly when its conclusions certainly lhomo modern sapiens undoubtedly gave the final blow to mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses but climate changes occurred in early Holocene have played THE major role.
Just take a map giving the plant cover in Eurasia in the late Mesolithic to realize that the famous steppe mammoth (and others) covering 1/3 to 1/4 of the surface area of the continent, from the Atlantic to sétendant borders of what would become China and Siberia. By early Holocene, the climate is changing rapidly and these steppes are drastically reduced to 5 or 10% of what it was, a dizzying ecological change. The new plant covers prove unfit The power supply enough exclusive mammoths (and others ...). So human responsibility is undoubtedly to qualify ...
3 / Two words on plants:
Without going into the question of domestication of all plants, in "How to almond", we learn that face the bitterness of oak acorns, we have not been able to domesticate this food source ??? Mr. Diamond, who is American, probably ignore the importance of the "acorn" in traditional agricultural civilizations of the west of Europe. While Europeans have eaten little acorns (except in parts of southern LEUROPE) but it was for the last millennia, a very valuable power supply source for our pig herds (with beech beechnuts). Hardly a common charter of the Middle Ages without this issue is seriously restricted ... Even today, some parts of Europes are specifically fed pork with acorns, a specialty ...
In this chapter, nothing either on the precious chestnut tree that was so important in the diet of the dune of southern LEUROPE populations. It should not go into Jared Diamond patterns ...
Same chapter, the recent selection of "large strawberries" through the invention of netting to protect crops from birds is simply grotesque. Besides the fact that lon can do the nets probably from the final Paleolithic, the most basic books dagronomie explains that the small European wood strawberry suddenly grows in the Renaissance and then the nineteenth century due to crosses with varieties of large strawberries First of Europes returned to the East and Virginia and Chile
4 ° / The domesticated species or companies leading long term effort to domesticate animals?
Domestication in a mishmash of more confused, we accept that we Europeans have been immensely lucky because we were surrounded domestication of animals ??? Jared Diamond seems to forget that domestication is often a very slow selective process. There is a safe bet that the ancestral horses were also restive and unpredictable as zebras, and there is no doubt that this is a repeat selection on hundreds or thousands of years of the most docile animals who have given current horses.
Ditto for antelope or gazelle that it would be impossible denfermer! As if the ancestors of our goats, our sheep and reindeer Lapps sétaient spontaneously thrown in pens. He also had no doubt a long selection process before daboutir to goats, sheep or reindeer cooperative
Note that the various African varieties dantilopes jump on average around 2m, one antelope leaps reached 4m high, this is the famous "Springbok" and not as 9m laffirme Diamond.
And not noublions that European domesticated goats can still make jumps of 1.20m or 1.30m. We put generally 1m40 fences in principle buried on 20cm as they also talent to pass underneath.
While grilling is a recent invention ... but once in the French countryside, hedge enclosures were manufactured by cutting the young shoots of trees and various species of shrubs and making bend in one direction or another so as to create crossed lattice of branches. This knowledge which seems to go back at least to the ancient times was a long process repeated every year and needed to be projected at least in the next 10 years, the time the hedge is sufficiently thick and high.
On the other hand, let start at liberty horses and two generations, you will see if you can still approach or harness them or ride them. When the sheep of Corsica and the Alps, they are descended from domesticated sheep returned to the state wild.
Read on all these issues, Jean Denis Vigne, historian of lélevage
What about elephants? DAfrique the elephant was once domesticated by the Carthaginians which made animal transportation and war. It was again domesticated in the Belgian Congo in 1930 and 1960, thanks to the knowledge that lon coolies had brought turkey. After the independence, left to themselves these wild elephants returned to the state. A new domestication experiment is under way in the Kruger Park in South Africa to do their carry tourists.
5 ° / An example of a surprising historical shortcut, South Africas:
Page 600, South dAfrique white face the Xhosa at the Great Fish River in 1702 sensuivraient 175 years of bitter wars and 9 during the fight which although refueled from their base of Cape Town, the white rose only dAfrique 1.6 km per year ??? !!!
Good summarize, this is 280 km. I'm not an expert on South Africas but that does not fit with my memories of the history of this country. So I plunged back into the books.
In fact, in 1702 there were barely 1,700 white (Dutch, French, German) in the small counter Cape because it sagissait much of a counter of the Dutch East India Company whose only function was the food supplies of boats of this company on the route to India. The limits of this counter 1710 are located about 800 km south west of the Great Fish River. The company navait no territorial hint of expansion, which would cost him financially, or his only concern was senrichir by the spice trade with Java.
The Great Fish River is reached around 1778 (just a mistake of 76 years!) No by an army of "white" and organized by Cape refueled but by a few thousand settlers Boer "rebels" mounted to the north and north-east precisely to escape the Cape government that prevented among other sétablir as they wish on new territories.
There will be 3 or rather wars between guerrillas made descarmouches small groups with no significant results up to this quen 1811, the British, the new masters of the Cape colony sen mingle effectively sending a veritable army supported by actual rear base (just an error of 109 years!).
Meanwhile, the Boers, who led a war on two fronts, against the British and against the Bantu tribes had founded in 1852 the free republic of Transvaal in the northern part of South Africas. Note that the northern border of this republic was about 1100 km north east of the Great Fish River ... We have absolutely no idea from where Jared Diamond out its 280 km by 175 years ...
And moreover, this story told by Jared Diamond as a war between whites and blacks was much more complicated than that since white is pretty beat them, the blacks were also puisquils open "mfecane" black and white often against other sallièrent black and white and not noublions the "bastards" who "drove" to Mon, louse and the other for them depending on the circumstances. It is light years of Jared Diamond's assertions.
6 ° / The forgotten because China quinadaptée demonstration
My last point questioned deeply, of 641 pages, Jared Diamond devotes only one chapter to speak of in China, Chapter 16 of page 485 to 501. These pages are dedicated to lean quick tongues and peoples of China and wants at least an abbreviated summary of its history. We would like to understand how so many people benefiting from natural resources and technology that was constantly dune far ahead of Occident, except for the last few centuries, has not conquered the world? Read about the history of Chinese science and technology exciting Joseph Needham, we can not do better!
Not a word about the adventure of the great admiral Zheng He who sélança on Pacific seas in 1405 with a dune hundred boats fleet whose greatest was at least 5 or 6 times the size of the Santa Maria and the technology, (cofferdams, Sailing bamboo frames, specialized vessels gardens for soybean cultivation pushes against scurvy) is breathtaking. His adventure was interrupted only for political and ideological reasons in 1433, just enough to remember that the history of peoples is also (and probably foremost) due to ideological and political choices of events.
Obviously, we are left with absolutely incasable history demonstrative diagrams in the "how sest made world history" seen by Jared Diamond, while curtain
Rideau also on recent history, or how 50 years of communism ruined China besides a huge human cost, probably 30 million deaths for the only major leap forward.
I would conclude this comment already well along by a counterexample:
LIslande: an island climate hardly more merciful than the western coast of Greenland where the Vikings lived, a land shaken every 10 years, or more often of earthquakes, volcanic déruptions rapidly cleared from the early years of the conquest whose soils are mainly sandy deserts, ice or volcanic debris in short, a land where the adaptation of those who sy installed, with rudimentary means, was breathtaking.
The current 300,000 Icelanders descended from a small founder population of a few thousand people arrived in IX-X century, installed with rudimentary means, that survived the climatic cooling of the fourteenth century, through the mini ice age of the seventeenth century, survived the bubonic plague, smallpox, the terrible explosion of Laki in 1783, climate cooling of the 1880s, in the Americas limmigration dune part of its population ... the economic crisis of 2008. This is one of the countries richest and most modern in the world. To meditate ...
