Flint's review of Guns, Germs, and Steel
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
Guns, Germs and Steel is a good book, and I suggest you follow up with reading Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
However, if you find yourself interested in primatology and evolutionary biology, I don't suggest you read Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee. Instead, I recommend Frans de Waal's Our Inner Ape, unlike Diamond, de Wall doesn't ignore Bonobos.
I do have one significant disagreement with Diamond, the degree which he is a material determinist. While I agree with him that most (all?) government resembles a kleptocracy, I disagree with him that it is an inevitable consequence of agriculture. Let me quote something I wrote a while ago:
"Jared Diamond hypothesizes that when...more
However, if you find yourself interested in primatology and evolutionary biology, I don't suggest you read Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee. Instead, I recommend Frans de Waal's Our Inner Ape, unlike Diamond, de Wall doesn't ignore Bonobos.
I do have one significant disagreement with Diamond, the degree which he is a material determinist. While I agree with him that most (all?) government resembles a kleptocracy, I disagree with him that it is an inevitable consequence of agriculture. Let me quote something I wrote a while ago:
"Jared Diamond hypothesizes that when...more
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Great posting Flint; while i find anthropology intersecting with politics works best as a kind of thought experiment, this was an interesting one. Which begs a question: if the a parasitic class did not arise amongst certain groups of people even though the material preconditions were all there, what (non-material?) factors do you see as possibly preventing this development?
