Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Ya-ta Boy]

I posted on another forum about this book a few days ago, to complete silence. I'm back here on this forum ('cause I finished it) and want to say that this one is as worthy of attention as 'Guns, Germs, and Steel'.

You may end up quibbling with details here and there, like critics do with 'Guns', but the underlying thesis is not really refutable. Just as Diamond stood outside and looked at all the various fields and pulled things together, Charles Mann did with this one. (He has less credibility because he is a journalist, but there is no doubt he fairly represented the views of the people in the fields he writes about. I felt it could have been more 'academic' in tone without hurting it's readability, but that was his style and choice.)

He writes only about North and South America and the recent research in the fields (anthropology, archeology, biology, ethnobiology etc). His contention is that the pre-Columbian population was considerably larger than previously thought. But that isn't the main thrust of the book, as I thought in the first section.

He demonstrates the effect the Indians had on their environment. The most remarkable one for me was that story we've all heard about a flock of passenger pigeons taking 3 days to fly over. Why? It turns out that the Indians in the eastern half of the US had had a few thousand years to alter the forest into a giant 'garden' of fruit and nut trees, which is what the passenger pigeons lived on. When Christopher and his horny boys landed with their diseases and wiped out up to 95% of the native population which had competed with the pigeons for food, the pigeon population boomed.

He also says that notable people in their fields are saying that the Amazon used to support a whole lot more people than it does today because of the way the Indians had learned to manage their environment.

Anyway, provocative and very readable. Highly recommended.

PS: There is no Noble Savage nonsense to the book at all.

[ddeubel]

I certain think of Diamond's book as a "classic" and stand by his thesis. So thanks, I will look for this book pronto.

We need more insightful people like these two authors who call for us to look beyond our assumptions and to look at human life in a more "scientific" and meaningful way . Not just the same ethnocentric fashion. But see the similarities and challenges common to all societies.

We have too manywho would label people like this as "cultural relativists". I say bullocks, it is just wisdom. That seeing beyond the smoke and mirrors, there is the light of human creativity and adaptation everywhere....

Have you read any of the translated stuff of the priest Bartolom�de Las Casas? He wrote at the time of the Spanish conquest and it is startling stuff....

DD

[gang ah jee]

There's a copy in at my university library. I'll check it out.

[Ya-ta Boy]

I think specialists are necessary to do the scut work, but it takes a special kind of specialist who can also write for the general, popular (in the best sense of that word) writer to get the word out. When there isn't a specialist with that kind of skill, then we need journalists who can fill in till a specialist can do it.

I 'promise' that you won't be disappointed with the book. You may not agree with him in detail, he will make you think about your assumptions. And that ain't a bad thing.

Enjoy.

[ddeubel]

Ya-ta,

I'm just glad to know there are still people out there who are passionate about the written word.

Too often the phrase, "a book you must read!" is over run by "A movie you must see!". And I think the world a little less because of it..............

By the way -- although old, it is an extremely good read along the same road, "Cultural Materialism" by Marvin Harris. Shows concretely how most of human behaviour is due to the material conditions of their daily lives.

DD

[endo]

[Gopher]

[igotthisguitar]

There's history, then there's the past

[gang ah jee]

[Big_Bird]

Bah! I'm extremely jealous of those who are still able to read books. About the only books I'm able to get through nowadays are Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder. You don't realise quite how wonderful it is to sit and read a whole (adult) book, until you are not able to do it anymore. Enjoy.

[Gopher]