システムエンジニアの晴耕雨読

< 新しい記事

新着記事一覧(全7553件)

過去の記事 >

2012.12.16

Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

テーマ：世界史のお話(57)

カテゴリ：日本史・世界史

Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

W W Norton & Co Inc; New e

1999

ジャレド・ダイアモンド「銃・病原菌・鉄（上）―1万3000年にわたる人類史の謎」

ジャレド・ダイアモンド「銃・病原菌・鉄（下）―1万3000年にわたる人類史の謎」

New Guineans, Yali asked me,

"Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it

to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of your own?"

The history of interactions among disparate peoples is

what shaped the modern wold through conquest, epidemics, and genocide.

Why were Europeans, rather than Africans or Native Americans,

For this book, here is such a sentence:

"History followed different courses for different peoples

because of differences among peoples' environments,

not because of biological differences among peoples themselves."

Al of that human history, for the first 5 or 6 million years

after our origins about 7 million years ago, remained confined to Africa.

By about half a million years ago, human fossils had diverged

from older Homo erectus skeltons in their enlarged, rounder,

and less angular skulls.

Human history at last took off around 50,000 years ago,

at the time of what I have termed our Great Leap Forward.

between the haves and the have-nots: between peoples with farmer power

and those without it, or between those who acquired it at different times,

The peoples of areas with a head start on food production thereby

gained a head start on the path leading toward guns, germs, and steel.

The result was a long series of collisions between the haves and

The importance of lethal microbes in human history is well illustrated

by Europeans' conquest and depopulation of New World.

Far more Native Americans died in bed from Eurasian germs than on the battlefield

from European guns and swords.

By 1618, Mexico' initial population of about 20 million had plummeted

to about 1.6 million.

For the New World as a whole, the Indian population decline in the century

or two following Columbus's arrival is estimated to have been as large

at 95 percent.

Where do innovations actually come from?

For all societies except he few past ones that were completely isolated,

much or most new technology is not invented locally but is instead

borrowed from other societies.

Inventing a writing system from scratch must have been incomparably

more difficult than borrowing and adapting one.

The importance of isolation is most obvious for Hawaii and Tonga,

both of which were separated by at least 4,000 miles of ocean

from the nearest societies with writing.

The largest population replacement of the last 13,000 years has been

the one resulting from the recent collsion

between Old World and New World societies.

Among the resulting proximate factors behind the conquest,

the most important included differences in germs, technology,

polotical organization, and writing.

In short, Europe's colonization of Africa had nothing to do with

differences between European and African peoples themselves,

as white racists assume.

Rather, it was due to accident of geography and bigeography -

in particular, to the continents' different areas, axes,

and suites of wild plant and animal species.

That is, the different historical trajectories of Africa and

Europe stem ultimately from differences in real estate.

Contents

PROLOGUE YALI'S QUESTION The regionally
differing courses of history
PART ONE FROM EDEN TO CAJAMARCA
CHAPTER 1 UP TO THE STARTING LINE What
happened on all the continents before 11,000 B.C.?
CHAPTER 2 A NATURAL EXPERIMENT OF HISTORY
How geography molded societies on Polynesian
islands
CHAPTER 3 COLLISION AT CALAMARCA Why the
Inca emperor Atahuallpa did not capture King
Charles I of Spain
PART TWO THE RISE AND SPREAD OF FOOD PRODUCTION
CHAPTER 4 FARMER POWER The roots of guns, germs, and steel
CHAPTER 5 HISTORY'S HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS
Geographic differences in the onset of food production
CHAPTER 6 TO FARM OR NOT TO FARM Causes of the spread of food production
CHAPTER 7 HOW TO MAKE AN ALMOND The
unconscious development of ancient crops
CHAPTER 8 APPLES OR INDIANS Why did
peoples of some regions fail to domesticate plants?
CHAPTER 9 ZEBRAS, UNHAPPY MARRIAGES, AND THE
ANNA KARENINA PRINCIPLE Why were most big
wild mammal species never domesticated?
CHAPTER 10 SPACIOUS SKIES AND TILTED AXES
Why did food production spread at different
rates on different continents?
PART THREE FROM FOOD TO GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
CHAPTER 11 LETHAL GIFT OF LIVESTOCK The evolution of germs
CHAPTER 12 BLUEPRINTS AND BORROWED LETTERS The evolution of writing
CHAPTER 13 NECESSITY'S MOTHER The evolution of technology
CHAPTER 14 FROM EGALITARIANISM TO KLEPTOCRACY The evolution of government and
religion
PART FOUR AROUND THE WORLD IN FIVE CHAPTERS
CHAPTER 15 YALI'S PEOPLE The histories of Australia and New Guinea
CHAPTER 16 HOW CHINA BECAME CHINESE The history of East Asia
CHAPTER 17 SPEEDBOAT TO POLYNESIA The history of the Austronesian expansion
CHAPTER 18 HEMISPHERES COLLIDING The
histories of Eurasia and the Americas compared
CHAPTER 19 HOW AFRICA BECAME BLACK The history of Africa
EPILOGUE THE FUTURE OF HUMAN HISTORY AS A SCIENCE
Acknowledgments
Further Readings
Credits
Index

お気に入りの記事を「いいね！」で応援しよう