Jared Diamond: World's Worst Mistake?

[HansMustermann]

My late father-in-law, Dr. Charles Hockett, Emeritus Goldwin Professor of Anthropology at Cornell, opined that before agriculture people were probably happier, but of course they mostly didn't live as long to enjoy it.

That doesn't mean that I'd care to live the life of a !Kung San in the Kalahari -- but then, they didn't always live in that god-forgotten desert. If I could inhabit a well-watered and temperate part of the world, e.g., France during a warm interglacial, I might be able to do without agriculture very well.

I have lived -- hell, I grew up -- in a cold-temperate environment with a mixed economy: hunting, fishing, gathering, gardening, some barter, and cash. It's called northern Wyoming, and that way of life exists today. When was I happiest? When I was felling large and small game, catching delicious trout by hand (yes, by hand; I ain't lyin'), and eating wild plums off the bush. The sense of the plenitude of nature was gratifying and comforting beyond any satisfaction that any other activity could provide.

Was mine the old happiness of the cave? Yes, I think it was. My father-in-law didn't disagree.

Except that wasn't the old happiness of those tribes at all.

You'd have the "happiness" of those tribes if you starved nearly to death when the berries are out of season and the game had been overhunted. And if other tribes would occasionally try to kill you just to prove they have balls (or kidnap and rape you if you're a woman.) In fact, you'd have several murdered or kidnapped relatives and friends before you even reached puberty. And if each such trip to pick berries meant a real risk to die, one way or another, from meeting some predator to just getting tetanus from some thorns. Etc.

You haven't seen the old life of the cavemen, you've seen a BS fantasy where such things are abundant only because they're no longer the main source of subsistence for millions, and where you actually also get some food from the fridge to supplement those berries and trout.

And that's really the problem with the whole noble savage myth: it's a BS fantasy.

 

[Marduk]

War has done more to further the cause of humanity than anything else, technology, international law, food preservation, transportation, ethics to name but a few are all things that have been improved by war.

When it comes down to it, war is just a form of competition and all animals engage in that, especially when resources become limited

If it wasn't for war, we'd still be in the dark ages, war is endemic to human society, thats why we only ever see utopian society depicted in science fiction

We have international courts which try people who don't do war properly, we are that good at it we have legalised the method.

As far as we know, warfare has only been with us a few thousand years, lest we forget Hamoukar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamoukar
before then attempts at warfare consisted of a bit of shoving and name calling and hitting people with sticks


posted on behalf of the global war industry

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, I wouldn't credit war with being that great, but, yes, it's been with us for quite some time. Before agriculture too. Cemetery 117 predates any agricultural settlements by many thousands of years, and cave paintings of groups of archers shooting at each other predate Cemetery 117 by many thousands of years.

 

[Delvo]

From what I recall GGS does state that the farmers didn't beat out non farmers by being in better shape but by shear weight of numbers.

And better decisions due being better at learning from the past, and more advanced technology, and in some cases immunity to (or at least ability to tolerate) certain diseases.

This article and his books don't contradict each other, though. He never said anything about the more technologically advanced, materially wealthy cultures being better. He just said they win when there's a conflict. In fact, such a culture NOT being inherently better is the theme that his various writings always have in common.

 

[geni]

And that's really the problem with the whole noble savage myth: it's a BS fantasy.

If you consider why it was created that wasn't really a problem. A more serious problem was the failure to realise that the average european imperialist really didn't have anything that could pass for a conscience.

 

[geni]

And better decisions due being better at learning from the past, and more advanced technology, and in some cases immunity to (or at least ability to tolerate) certain diseases.

Those were factors that kicked in to a greater extent when it was european famers Vs other farmers. The shear weight of numbers thing was more relivant to farmers vs non farmers.

 

[HansMustermann]

If you consider why it was created that wasn't really a problem. A more serious problem was the failure to realise that the average european imperialist really didn't have anything that could pass for a conscience.

One doesn't excuse the other, though. Opposing some BS rationalization with an opposite and equally BS rationalization, does not a right make.

Sure, the age of imperialism was ruthless and utterly lacking any kind of conscience. And sure, the whole "mission to civilize" and "white man's burden" rationalizations were bogus, and highly offensive at that.

But I don't think that a lie in the opposite direction is then justified.

 

[sackett]

Hans, you come over a tad bitter. Did I (or anybody) try to bring in the Noble Savage?

When I speak of the plenitude of nature, or at least my sense of it when getting a free lunch from the creek and the bushes, I'm describing something that still exists in my part of the world, with its thin population and abundant emptiness. I'm not calling myself or my fellow Wyomingoids particularly noble -- or savage either, come to that.

I recall my reading of the Journals of Lewis and Clark. They traversed the Great Plains and Mountain West -- my country -- at a time when the Indians had had horses and trade goods, including firearms, for nearly a hundred years, and were probably at the peak of their population and hunting efficiency. And yet, L & C described an immense territory overflowing with game: elk, antelope, deer, bears, and of course buffalo. (At times the air actually vibrated with the roaring of the buffalo bulls. I've heard this myself.) They also saw what they called "herds" of wolves, fifty at a time, moving fearlessly in daylight. Predators in those numbers would have to have plenty of prey.

I said that I lived in a mixed economy, not a pure hunting economy at all. But I believe we all lived a more satisfying life because we could -- we ****** had to -- get a significant amount of our provender using the old pre-agricultural ways. If it felt good to hunt and forage in our watered-down version of the Forest Primeval, think how it felt for the old-timers ca. 15,000 BC, when every prospect was bustin' with good things to eat.

Do you really think that hunting peoples lived in a constant state of fear and insecurity comparable to subsistence farmers?

 

[PixyMisa]

Do you really think that hunting peoples lived in a constant state of fear and insecurity comparable to subsistence farmers?

No guns. No medicine. No alcohol - that came with agriculture.

So, yes.

 

[HansMustermann]

Hans, you come over a tad bitter.

Yes, hearing the same woo over and over again, does tend to get me cranky.

Did I (or anybody) try to bring in the Noble Savage?

Yet you describe the exact same thing by any other name.

You lived a fantasy without the actual nasty parts like endemic warfare or periodic starvation, but have no problem saying that it _is_ the "old happiness of the cave." Not even similar or sort of like, but just is.

When I speak of the plenitude of nature, or at least my sense of it when getting a free lunch from the creek and the bushes, I'm describing something that still exists in my part of the world, with its thin population and abundant emptiness. I'm not calling myself or my fellow Wyomingoids particularly noble -- or savage either, come to that.

But you weren't saying you're living the happiness of modern day, post-industrial age Wyoming, but the "old happiness of the cave."

And you also apparently miss that that thin population and abundant emptiness only happened after the original inhabitants were driven out. Yet you seem to have no problem assuming that it was always so, and base some caveman fantasy on that mistake.

I recall my reading of the Journals of Lewis and Clark. They traversed the Great Plains and Mountain West -- my country -- at a time when the Indians had had horses and trade goods, including firearms, for nearly a hundred years, and were probably at the peak of their population and hunting efficiency. And yet, L & C described an immense territory overflowing with game: elk, antelope, deer, bears, and of course buffalo. (At times the air actually vibrated with the roaring of the buffalo bulls. I've heard this myself.) They also saw what they called "herds" of wolves, fifty at a time, moving fearlessly in daylight. Predators in those numbers would have to have plenty of prey.

1. But those wrote what impressed them, not conducted a study as to whether the density and distribution and movement patterns can actually support an abundant life for the people depending on them for food. Not to mention the sheer amount of territory those crossed. Seeing a herd in place X, doesn't say anything about the availability of game to the tribe in place Y, some 50 miles away.

2. Yes, in an age when the Indians already had horses and guns and most actually already lived in a mixed economy by trading with the whites. (E.g., for ammo for those guns.) Try going a couple hundred years back in time to doing that by foot and with a bow and arrow, or for that matter to before the bow and arrow if you want "old happiness of the cave." The bow and arrow actually arrived ridiculously late in the great plains.

3. Actual Indian tales actually include and often try to explain periods of starvation. Including at least one where the young murdered the elders for refusing to try to migrate to some other place where the tribe won't starve. (And subsequently were cursed with a vengeful spirit, apparently.)

4. Again, actual analysis of bone density indicates regular periods of extreme malnutrition.

I said that I lived in a mixed economy, not a pure hunting economy at all.

Yet you see no problem extrapolating that to _be_ the same as the pure hunter-gatherer "happiness."

Which is just as bogus as claiming that because I played in the snow as a kid, I know what it's like to be an eskimo.

But I believe we all lived a more satisfying life because we could -- we ****** had to -- get a significant amount of our provender using the old pre-agricultural ways. If it felt good to hunt and forage in our watered-down version of the Forest Primeval, think how it felt for the old-timers ca. 15,000 BC, when every prospect was bustin' with good things to eat.

And it's that kind of stonking silliness that makes me cranky. It felt good for you because it was basically entertainment. It was something you can do as an alternative to your daily job, and entirely carefree and without any obligations or repercussions. If you failed to come back with enough game one day, it just didn't matter: you just went to the fridge and got something else to eat.

Whereas for those primitive tribesmen, it wasn't leisure or entertainment, it was a full time job. And at that, one that could get them killed at any time. And one where failure meant your family including children went to sleep hungry. Again.

Basically it felt good for you _because_ you only lived a watered-down version of it.

Do you really think that hunting peoples lived in a constant state of fear and insecurity comparable to subsistence farmers?

Dunno about fear or insecurity, but think a life where you have anywhere between a third to two thirds chance to die murdered before even reaching 30. We're talking a murder rate exceding Colombia's (taken as the worst place on Earth in that aspect) by more than an order of magnitude. That's the old happiness you pine for.

 

[Cory Duchesne]

Relevant to the subject of population growth, reproductive instincts and civilization is an argument from the book “The 10,000 Year Explosion” by anthropologists Cochran and Harpending. In it they say that the development of agriculture, although it brought a vast array of unforeseen problems, might have caused a huge increase in the rate of human evolution, and “numerous evolutionary adaptations to the change in lifestyle and society”. So while mass agriculture seems needlessly destructive, it might serve another goal of “nature” altogether. A goal that doesn’t have to include the welfare or happiness of the average person, or even the longevity of a certain social system or civilization.

It’s already obvious there can be way more recombinations in a large (and now global) population. More mixture with “alien” material as well, as they keep finding traces of viruses and bacteria in the human genome too (8% of our genome is constructed of what used to be retroviruses).

I see agriculture with metallurgy and everything that has followed as the means toward further evolution, or the furnace of which the ore of humanity is broken. The progress of civilization itself could be seen as a dangerous trek up a steep mountain, and the higher we climb the more perilous yet potentially glorious the situation becomes. Happiness has little to do with it, it’s perhaps more about the ideal toward a horizon, it is the love of danger, adventure and transformation. Or perhaps more commonly and less flatteringly, a panicked scramble for (and a stumbling onto) imaginative solutions, with some incidental impressive results.

Diamond’s big thing seems to be “sustainability”, and I suppose if indefinite survival is what we value, then there are virtues to hunter gather existence, provided you are willing to have significantly higher death ratios through tribal warfare (at least if you go by certain data) and also provided, and this is a big one, you are willing to sacrifice accumulation of scientific knowledge and technology. You can’t practice metallurgy without the kinds of populations that only agriculture can support, and without metallurgy you are going to accomplish squat scientifically and technologically. And the lack of science and tech of hunter gatherer existence has long term survival drawbacks as well.

 

[Roboramma]

I will need to find and read this essay, but just from what is posted here, I have to wonder what Mr. Diamond (Dr. Diamond) has been ingesting.

I just googled "Jared Diamond, world's worst mistake" and it was the first result: http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/claessen/agriculture/mistake_jared_diamond.pdf

The world's population soared after agriculture began, and has increased again after each substantial improvement in agriculture. The amount of quality nutrition that is reliably available to the overall population is higher under agriculture; the opportunity for some leisure time, which is when humans are able to develop more complex arts and social activities, in much higher.

Those are issues of fact which he directly contradicts in the article. Hans has alluded to evidence that Diamond's sources are cherrypicked and not representative. I'm not sure who's right at this point.

The Kalahari has spawned some remarkably tough people, but don't forget there are very few of them, and that when they compete against even modestly developed agrarian societies, they lose.

Perhaps, but I don't think he made any point about how good hunter-gatherers are at competing with agricultural societies (in fact he makes the same point as you in guns germs and steel), but rather with their quality of life in comparison to agricultural societies.

The 'bushmen' are actually a different genetic subset of the human race--one of several found only in Africa--and the reason they are found only there is that they couldn't survive anywhere else.

Do you have any support for this particular statement? I highly doubt it's true: it seems much more likely that they simply haven't had the opportunity to move and that other places are already inhabited. Of course their culture and traditional knowledge wouldn't apply so well elsewhere, but I see little reason to believe that bushmen are more specialised than any other particular hunter-gatherer groups.

But at heart, Diamond is an old school Rousseauian "noble savage" believer. He feels that the uncorrupt primitives of the world are better suited to life than we ignorant evil civilized louts;

I've never noticed him saying anything of that sort.

that the advance of Western civilization was nothing more than luck--the premise of his book "Guns, Germs and Steel"

He certainly didn't say that the advance of western civilization was nothing more than luck. He said it was dependent upon certain facts of geography and biogeography.

--and doomed to fail soon due to our hubris (the premise of "Collapse").

Collapse doesn't say anything about being "doomed to fail soon", in fact he points out there modern society is very different from the "collapsed" societies that he talks about in the book and that we have to be very careful about attempting to make any conclusions based on them. He says that while he is sometimes pessimistic he feels it quite likely that we will develop solutions to the current problems that we have, etc.

Having staked out his thesis on philosophic preference, he does a good job of selecting evidence that backs his position; but you will not find in either book examples of praise for the "Western" mindset or condemnation for the "primitive" worldview.

Actually, you will. For example read the chapter in collapse about Montana. Or near the end of the book when he talks about oil companies with sustainable environmental practices.

He completely ignores the role of ideas, because any sophisticated thinking is, from his corner, inherently bad.

I don't think he ever ignores the role of ideas. In guns germs and steel he does make that point that once the right circumstances arrive, certain ideas are very likely to come about and be embraced, or at the least that they cannot be embraced in the wrong circumstances, but that doesn't suggest that the ideas themselves aren't important.

I enjoy reading his work, because he is very thoughtful and finds lots of cool evidence; you just have to remember that he's not necessarily going to examine that evidence with an openness to complex society or especially, any form of wealth or technology being a Good Thing.

I can agree to that: I found Guns Germs and Steel quite convincing, Collapse (particularly as he relates it to modern society) less so, and this essay mentioned in the OP less so still. He does have a bias, like everyone, but I think he does a good job to present valid evidence of his premises.

Thus, the distribution of domesticable plants and animals and their role in developing civilization is carefully noted; the idea that lots of people had the same plants and animals around them, but did not use them to develop does not enter his dissertations.

Actually it does, but he dismisses it's importance because once a plant has been domesticated it tends to spread throughout it's range, and also because in cases where that spread is slow, it has often been domesticated more than once. He never argues that domesticable plants and animals will be immediately domesticated, but that people are smart everywhere and that it isn't a difference in intelligence that led to differences in the speed of domestication. He also argues that cultural differences may play a role, but that they can't be used to explain the degree of the difference between, say, North America and Europe.

That intellectual piece is left out of it, because he deeply feels that that human urge to change and make better is somehow evil, unnatural.

I've never seen him say anything of that sort.

 

[Puppycow]

I vaguely remember in high school being assigned to read a book about African Pygmies by an anthropologist that visited them and portrayed their society in very Utopian terms (it seemed like paradise to me from reading it). But now, being more skeptical I rather doubt that their lives are as idyllic as portrayed in that book.

 

[ThunderChunky]

Jared Diamond is spewing sensationalist BS that is basically what a certain audience wants to hear. As usual.

I've already addressed agriculture before, but here goes again.

When you analyze bone densities you get this: http://www.anthro.ucdavis.edu/faculty/mchenry/ajpa29.pdf

Short story: in periods of manutrition, you get bands of different bone densities, but they tend to even out back again when you get enough food for a few years. The bones from hunter-gatherer tribes are the worst cases by far. It shows not only that malnutrition did happen, but it was more regular and more severe than what you get even in bones from the saxon dark ages.

Analysis of tooth enamel, ditto, shows that a lot of those tribesmen grew up severely starved.

Well supposedly average height decreased after agriculture. Is height not another measure of nutrition?

Warfare and violence, well, short version is: he's an idiot.

Long version: warfare in tribal societies is permanent and endemic, with attrition rates going up to two thirds. Yes, of all people born there, up to that many can die in tribal warfare. More median cases like the Yanomamö had over a third attrition, which is to say, over a third die in endemic warfare.

We also know that the most peaceful American Indian tribes "only" attacked their neighbours once a year, the least, well, let's just say they were right bloodthirsty.

And while warfare in agriculture age became better documented and more organized, and more clearly for resources, violence in tribal societies tends to be for just about any reason whatsoever, from accusations of sorcery to basically just for lulz. E.g., for the aforementioned Yanomamö, the chief reason for warfare seems to be accusations of sorcery.

Tribal mind set often was basically: If your shaman says he summoned more animals for you to hunt, but your tribe still starves, it must be because the evil shaman of another tribe is driving the animals away from your hunters. (It can't be that your shaman is full of it.) Time to teach that evil tribe a lesson.

And they often had codes of violence escalation for it. Starting from premeditated murder of someone from the other tribe, and at least theoretically going all the way to complete genocide. Yes, genocide too is one thing that agricultors didn't invent.

And so on, and so forth. Basically there's a name for the whole idea: the noble savage myth. You know, oh, life was so much better, and happier, and everyone so equal, and caring, and bla, bla, bla. BS.

Well according to wikipedia life expectancy went from 33 in the upper paleolithic to 20 in the neolithic (when ag began). So if life span decreased what is your point here?

 

[HansMustermann]

That's actually just a good example of a bogus spurious correlation. For most of the planet, agriculture didn't begin at the same time as the Neolithic. In fact, even the earliest serious agriculture begins well in the Chalcolithic.

Most of the agricultural societies we know of, in the fertile crescent, actually flourished well in the _Bronze_ Age. Which incidentally was also invented there, in the 4'th millennium BCE.

But even in most of the Bronze Age, outside of the fertile Crescent and later Egypt, there was no real agriculture. You still had hunter/gatherer communities which supplemented their diet with some plants at most, and _some_ also domesticated some animals.

But for most of the world's surface, even that hadn't happened yet. If we're talking Neolithic, even that early proto-aggriculture to supplement the hunter-gathering only existed around that fertile crescent in the middle east. You move away from there, you start getting tribesmen running around in fur loincloths again.

Repeat after me: there was _no_ agriculture, not even early primitive attempts, in the Neolithic outside that area.

Blaming the life expectancy reduction on agriculture is silly.

You want to know what happened in the Neolithic?

A) climate change. That supposedly plentiful life of hunting and gathering just got a heck of a lot less plentiful. For example an Europe which was already saturated for how many humans it can feed, just turned into something which could feed a heck of a lot less.

B) even more warfare. As resources dwindled, competition for them just got nastier.

In fact, if you want to compare life expectancies with and without agriculture, compare it to places which actually had agriculture, like Egypt. And blimey, those actually gained a couple of years compared to that Paleolithic average.

 

[HansMustermann]

Oh yeah, and the double-speak around the size of humans is what ticked me off about Jared's silliness too. On one hand he uses it as proof of bad diet when it suits that point, on the other hand he handwaves the bushmen's 2000 calories a day average (and roll that in your head: average, not guaranteed for any given day!) is handwaved as ok for their size. Suddenly their being small is no longer a sign of not enough nutrition, when he wants to use the bushmen for poster children for how great it was without agriculture.

_That_ moves even outside of the realm of cherry-picking and in the realm of outright dishonesty. It's a "heads I win, tails you lose" kind of rationalization. When his savages are taller, it's because they eat more, when they're actually shorter and eat less, hey, it's enough food for their size.

And again, the proof in the pudding is that that size reduction didn't only happen in the agricultural areas. If agriculture were to blame, you'd see 5 ft tall agricultors surrounded by 6 ft tall hunter gatherers. That's actually not the case.

Estimates of the average height of ancient Egyptians for example range from about 160cm for early estimates, to 170cm tall even for for commoners in some more modern estimates based on their furniture (as in, much shorter and you'd need a step ladder to get on their chairs, for example), with some going all the way to estimating 180cm. The most common estimation at any rate lies around 5'5" average height, or about 165cm.

Considering for example that the soldiers in the US independence war averaged 5'6" (i.e., back of the envelope calculation 167cm), and those weren't particularly chronically malnourished, I fail to see how agriculture harmed them. And this one is a male-only estimate too.

But at any rate, what happened somewhere along the line is that evolution actually selected a different kind of human race in that climate change. The human skeletons from the Paleolithic, though human all right, aren't the same as the skeletons of modern well-fed humans. They're a whole different kind of build. They're taller but also thinner, and with thicker bones, for example. And there are differences in teeth too, though some human races, like the aboriginal Australians, seem to have inherited that old type of teeth.

So the comparison isn't exactly apples to apples. You're not comparing hunter-gatherers to agricultors, you're essentially comparing two different races. One of which was the predominant one in the Paleolithic, but seems to have been displaced by people more like you or me in the Neolithic.

Essentially you don't know if that difference in size is due to diet alone. It could be that those Paleolithic humans were actually short by the standards of what that race could have achieved if better fed.

 

[HansMustermann]

Oh yeah, and one more thing... the idea of egalitarianism back in ye goode olde days? Bunk too.

Exhibit one, infanticide.

Yes, it happened. Lots. It actually seems to have been a lot more prevalent before agriculture. So think of it as retroactive birth control, I guess. (We just got told that those enlightened hunter-gatherers practiced birth control, unlike those evil agricultors who wanted lots of offspring. So, yeah, think of leaving a baby in the snow or beheading it as birth control, I guess. Yes, it rubs me the wrong way too.)

But what I wanted to talk about is something else about it: Almost all over the world evidence points out that female infants were far more killed than male ones. Yes, even in the paleolithic. If you find a little beheaded skeleton, chances are a lot higher it will be a little female baby. In some places the estimates are as high as 50% of all females born were killed. Yes, in the paleolithic.

Exhibit two, yeah, let's talk about height. While in the paleolithic males were indeed quite tall and thin, the funny thing are female skeletons. A heck of a lot are disproportionately shorter than the males, and there's also a lot more variability in size among females, and even more important a lot of regional variation. (Unlike what would happen if there were simply a preset sexual dimorphism in the species.) E.g., if you look at the prehistoric skeletons in Menorca, the females were practically dwarves.

Now it's possible that there was some weird-ass genetics at play. As I was saying, they _were_ a different race. But if you want to ascribe the size differences to just nutrition (and the afore mentioned variability would kinda point that way too), then guess who got to go to bed hungry when food was scarce? Yep, the girls.

Both factors don't exactly tell to me "gender equality". On the contrary, it's what you'd expect in a society where the boys matter (e.g., because they'll be great warriors and carry your name and so on) while the girls are a liability.

 

[Howie Felterbush]

My late father-in-law, Dr. Charles Hockett, Emeritus Goldwin Professor of Anthropology at Cornell, opined that before agriculture people were probably happier, but of course they mostly didn't live as long to enjoy it.

That doesn't mean that I'd care to live the life of a !Kung San in the Kalahari -- but then, they didn't always live in that god-forgotten desert. If I could inhabit a well-watered and temperate part of the world, e.g., France during a warm interglacial, I might be able to do without agriculture very well.

I have lived -- hell, I grew up -- in a cold-temperate environment with a mixed economy: hunting, fishing, gathering, gardening, some barter, and cash. It's called northern Wyoming, and that way of life exists today. When was I happiest? When I was felling large and small game, catching delicious trout by hand (yes, by hand; I ain't lyin'), and eating wild plums off the bush. The sense of the plenitude of nature was gratifying and comforting beyond any satisfaction that any other activity could provide.

Was mine the old happiness of the cave? Yes, I think it was. My father-in-law didn't disagree.

So what are you doing in Detroit?

 

[Nichiro]

And all along I thought that the worst mistake was to make the first weapon to kill another human being.

 

[HansMustermann]

Now that's a damn good and insightful point, if I ever saw one.

Though as a minor nitpick, the first weapon that seems to have triggered warfare was the bow and arrow. They were actually weapons that were actually used for hunting and only incidentally could also be used against another human too. I don't think whoever first built one was really thinking "now we can kill some of those pesky people from the nearby tribe." Though as you've only said "mistake", I can see how in the long term it could be argued to qualify as such.