This book Should be on everyone's "Must Read List." Diamond explores the relationships between the development of human technologies and Their Regional Geographic Environments. He shows how environment Either limits or permits the exchange of new ideas and technologies, and he shows thatmany Cultural Developments Which We have tended to view as accidents of history are, in fact, the logical results of the geographical / geological Orientations of continents. Diamond's analysis of human cultural development is pertinent not just to development on our own planet, but on any planet with similar geological characteristics (oceans, continents, plate tectonics). No science fiction writer Should ever again attempt to invent an alien society on a distant planet without first reading this book. There is an inherent logic to all evolutionary processes, and this book illuminates That logic in a manner did everyone with a high school education can understand. In addition, this book is a fascinating source of ideas for geographical, anthropological, and historical research. It must be Considered The First volume in a new field of research: the history of human cultural and technological evolution. How does this differentiate from, For Example, the history of science or the history of technology or the history of culture? Well, it Combines all of thesis areas and includes the principles of environmental geography. Traditionally, the study of history has ignored most geographical factors and Concentrated instead on the lives of rulers and the works of "great men." Diamond shows the foundational necessities Which make it possible for Those "great men" of history to exist and produce. Historical events do not just happen - They happen as a result of a long series of causes-and-effects Which go back to the movement of tectonic plates over millions of years - on geological timescales. For Example, we Often point to Leonardo da Vinci as a foundational thinker in the history of technological development. HOWEVER, da Vinci did not spring up from nothing. Before da Vinci, there were Erasmus and Copernicus, and Both of them would never have been exposed to Arab mathematics without the Crusades, and Arabs would not havebeen able to develop a rich mathematical and scientific body of work without contacts with the ancient Greek and Ancient Indo-Persian manuscripts assembled in Baghdad after the Islamic Conquest. There would havebeen no Islam without the long history of trade amongst and by various Semitic tribes around the Red Sea, there would havebeen no Red Sea without the collision between Africa and Eurasia and the Subsequent rifting in the Afar triangle. One can, in fact, start with the waterways and trade routes between the Mediterranean region and India and shoe how cultural evolution what Entirely dependent upon them. No one Should write history any more without considering thesis influences. In summary, Diamond's book is profoundly important for many reasons and Should Significantly influence the way we study history, anthropology, and evolution from now on. For a longer, more in-depth review, please visit my website at [...]
