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It's a very fascinating and intriguing book. Diamond made it so simple to understand how complex societies were formed. So much of it depended on environment. If you lived in a fertile environment, then it was highly probably that population would grow, leading to formation of larger society. With arid and infertile environment, you were more likely to scatter around, since food production would be insufficient to maintain large population. Eurasia was able to advance more rapidly than Americas
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This book is really interesting. I was already familiar with a lot of the evolutionary and biological history and theory used in the book but I found the specific history of mankind and how it fit in with the biology very fascinating. Although this book is supposedly for the masses it can get pretty intense and almost tedious sometimes...you just gotta keep plowing through.
A great study on environmental determinism. A major flaw however, is that Diamond starts with a bit of a eurocentric premise. Who says Western nations are superior? It's a bit of a value judgement to say that technology or empire makes a people superior to others. I guess its a matter of how you choose to look at things...
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The 1/2 - 2/3 of the book is very interesting and good but it boreville after that.
Fascinating book.
Jan 28, 2008
Carol
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