Why Oh Why...

A hilarious (and sort of wistful) quote from the second last chapter of Jared Diamond's book.  Thought I'd share.

"Had Africa's rhinos and hippos been domesticated and ridden, they would not only have fed armies but also have provided an unstoppable cavalry to cut through the ranks of European horsemen.  Rhino-mounted Bantu shock troops could have overthrown the Roman Empire.  It never happened". (399)

Oh rhino, if only, if only...

The Axis of a Continent

According to Jared Diamond, the picture below of some very basic geography explains nearly all of the "very differences experiences of Native Americans, Africans, and Eurasians." (176)  If one knows where a wide variety of domesticatable species are (Fertile Cresent) and the general terrain and weather of the general regions, you can follow and predict man's progress since our first steps out of Africa without being surprised by any twists or turns that this development takes.

If you were to remember one thing after reading Guns, Germs, and Steel, you would do well to remember this image.

Because climate (in general) varies depending of latitude (lines like the equator), crops that are domesticated at a certain latitude will be able to survive throughout that latitude.  The East-West axis of Eurasia meant that domesticated crops, animals, trade, art, and technology could be easily carried across the entire continent.  Breakthroughs in any of these developmentally-crucial areas would quickly and easily be adopted by all of the societies living there, which would accelerate them into discovering more things, etc...  Their East-West axis let the entire continent "brainstorm" and share advancements; this is why Europe and China were initially so advanced.

By comparison, the Americas (and to a lesser extent Africa) had a dominant North-South axis.  The climates along these axis differed very widely.  From the wide open plains of central North America, to the misty peaks of the Andes, to the lush Amazon Basin; the terrain varies almost like a spectrum as one travels from pole to pole.  The made the transmission of ideas, technology, livestock, and crops extremely difficult.  Entire civilizations, like the Incas, were seemingly "isolated" in their latitude.  Without the fast sharing of ideas, their development lagged behind that in Eurasia.

The effects of these very simple geographical differences decided the ENTIRE path of history.

Even though I normally do not like to accept anything as fate, this seems awfully hard to dispute.  If any of you reading this feel differently though, please share.

Art of War

War is a large part of human development.  As Diamond's title Guns, Germs, and Steel puts it, humankind progresses in three ways; in technology (Steel), biology (Germs), and the ways that we fight (Guns).

The ways that we fight and our ability to fight always determine the outcome of a conflict.  Unless there is some massive stroke of luck, the army with a combination of the better weapons, the greater numbers, and the better strategy will win.  A group that is efficient at food-gathering (in today's world this would be money-gathering) can support people who specialize in fighting or in improving their technology.  Thus a quick way to judge a (human) society's level of development is how well they can do in a conflict.  The reason I specify human society is because another intelligent life form may come into being without using natural selection, which pretty much only promotes violence-capable living things to consciousness.

The conflicts that Diamond describes were at first fought only with sticks and stones, or through slow developmental progressions that do not really resemble conflicts, in which hunter-gatherers were pushed out of an area by much more advanced farming groups.  Diamond does not go into deep detail over these conflicts or what they arose over.  His interest lies more with the environmental differences that led to these conflicts.  As he puts it: "whether geography can account for history's broad pattern." (26)

Dreaming of a Wide Open Sky

Diamond describes how environmental variations drove the earliest of human development, following our species up to the European Industrial Revolution.  I am wondering how much his theory applies to our development after this point in time; and if it does not apply, what does?

The dreams of societies across the ages have a profound impact on their behavior and the way that they progress.  During the middle ages in Europe, the so-called "Holy Land" and the crusades into it altered the continent's history.  The ancient Greeks told legends of their Gods meeting mortals.  Perhaps it was this search for the divine in nature that led to their society's tremendous progress in mathematics and science.

One could say that society's dreams today have grown more primitive.  People hope for peace and unity - not only with their fellow man but also with the planet - as if it was another supernatural being that had to be ritually appeased.  This has been a goal for enlightened folks throughout history.  A person's influence in this respect has grown quite a bit today, as the internet allows one's opinions to be transmitted and shared quickly and widely.  The far corners of the world have now been mapped out and a citizen's freedoms have expanded.  It is now far easier than it has ever been to get on a plane and build a school or a house somewhere; to make a sign, tweet together a mob, and protest an issue on your government's doorstep.

People also dream of the stars, and of continuing humanity's journey from the African plains off of Earth completely.  This follows a bit more of the "frontier" mindset, very similair to the way European youth would dream of the "Land of Opportunity" on the Atlantic's other shore.

Unfortunately much of the enthusiasm that was felt in North America about space was lost after the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War's space race petered out.  Public opinion drives policy, and so - short of another Cold War or some massive shift in public thinking - it is unlikely that a government will be behind mankind's next push for the stars.  Getting into space requires a lot more than a boat, today it would have to be a collaborative effort between many nations and many citizens (an important distinction) to reach Mars or beyond.  More likely is the private sector seeing some opportunity for profit in space, which might (fingers crossed) drive a "gold rush" off-planet.

Homegrown Food Stuffs

Within the next few decades, the last few societies that survive as hunter-gatherers will make the switch to food production.  Humans began their struggle towards today as hunter-gatherers, indeed our closest relatives, the Chimpanzees, also exist as hunter-gatherers.

When the last Aboriginal Australian decides to buy food from a supermarket instead of gathering it as they traditionally would, when the last isolated tribe in the Amazon decides to begin growing the seeds that the "civilized" missionaries offer to bring them, humankind will lose the last of their commitment to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

Barring some world-wide natural disaster and the breaking down of food distribution from farms to the city's tables, humanities shift from living off the land, to cultivating the land will be permament.

Is this a loss we should be concerned with?

Or is this progress that we should celebrate?

I believe that this is definite progress, another sign that humans are not monkys with larger-than-average brains.  I am interested if any of you hold the opposite opinion, not just so I can argue the point more later (I kid, I kid), but mainly because I geniunly don't know if there is any way to prevent this loss.  How can we justify some people still living like this?

Atahuallpa

The largest population shift of the modern age has been the "discovery" and subsequent colonization of the New World by Europeans.  Nearly all of the natives of the New World were conquered, assimiliated, or gradually dissappeared under European influence.  Why were the Native Americans at such a disadvantage? Considering that they had colonized the New World over 13,000 years ago, why were they not able to repel the "invading" Europeans or at least welcome them as equals?

A stylized Atahuallpa, a Spanish soldier
is visible at the bottom left.

Jared Diamond presents the meeting between Atahuallpa and Pizarro as one of the defining moments of this seeming inequality.  Atahuallpa was the absolute monarch of the Inca empire, which at the time of his meeting with Pizarro was the largest and most advanced society in all of the New World.  Pizarro represented King Charles I of Spain, which at the time was the most powerful state in Europe.  While this seemed to be an important meeting of two superpowers, Pizarro had with him only a ragtag group of 168 Spanish soldiers while Atahuallpa was leading a trained and experienced army of 80,000 soldiers.  Why then was Pizarro able to capture Atahuallpa and hold him ransom for 8 months?

The reason, as Diamond explains, is mainly technological.  The Incan warriors carried clubs as their primary weapons, and wore quilted armor, which provided good protection against their type of weapons.  The Spanish wore metal armor and carried mainly metal edged weapons.  Their armor was good protection against the clubs, with most strikes leading to injury, not death.  The Spaniard's swords and daggers easily penetrated the Incas quilted armor.  And perhaps of greatest advantage to the Spanish, Pizarro's party had 68 horses.  The Incas had never domesticated a large animal, for farming or for combat.  The horse enabled the Spanish to travel longer distances than they would on foot, to attack quickly by surprise or flee successfully from a stronger force.

Francisco Pizarro González

It was ignorance of this technological disadvantage, and ignorance of the Spaniard's ambition to conquer their New World that led Atahuallpa to walk with only a small guard right up to Pizarro's force.  Then, still not understanding that the Spanish were a conquering force and not a raiding party, Atahuallpa naively offered (and did!)  pay Pizarro history's largest ransom*.  Pizarro's background included stories of Cortés and his conquest of the Aztecs.  European knowledge moved him to set an ambush, while Incan knowledge made Atahuallpa ignorant that such an ambush would take place.


* The ransom was the volume of the room where Atahuallpa was held prisoner in gold, and twice in silver.  It boggles the mind that the Incas were able to deliver this demand within two months of its asking.

Polynesian Development

Diamond puts forward the settlement of the Polynesian Islands as an "experiment" in the ways that geography and ecology can shape human development.

According to most evidence, the first islands of Polynesia were settled around 2000 years ago.  These islands, which included Fiji, Tonga, and Somoa, were where the distinctive Polynesian culture developed.  The people spread north and eastwards, eventually populating the Hawaiian islands 1700 years ago and Easter Island around 1200 years ago.

This is a good experiment in human development because the Polynesian settlers, as they spread out through the islands, all brought with them the same three domesticated animals (the pig, chicken, and dog) and were all - genetically and culturally - very similar.  Although they started out on a level playing field, their individual societies after several centuries would become vastly different.  The Hawaiian islands would support a vibrant society with intensive food production and a complex system of royalty while the settlers of the Chatham islands in the south would actually revert back to hunting-gathering even though their ancestors had a stable way of food production.

Diamond's hypothesis is extremely well supported by the settlement of the Polynesian islands.  They were all settled by the same culture and the same peoples, who spread east and north from the Melanesian islands, and they all ended up creating different cultures and completely different ways of survival.

While reading this, I wondered how much one can apply geography to the behavior of society today.  Can we still assume, as Diamond does, that humans everywhere are the same?

The movements that he studies in Guns, Germs, and Steel take place over hundreds of years.  Perhaps we now move to quickly for these ideas to apply.

Why in a hundred years we may have begun settling Mars.  Hey: I can dream too :P

"Guns, Germs, and Steel" - An Introduction

This book is about history.  And it is also fact, not fiction.  I guess that that makes it a bit of a deviation for me, seeing as I rather prefer to read science fiction.

Without further ado, I'd like to introduce my study of "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond.  Now I am only part of the way through, and I need to break this whole thing up into any number of parts, so I will begin with the questions, not the answers, that Mr. Diamond poses.

History has proceeded very differently for all human cultures since the end of the last ice age 13,000 years ago.  Jared Diamond explains that these disparities exist solely because of differences in the environments of these cultures.

"Guns, Germs and Steel" takes us back to the very dawn of human evolution, from human's divergence from apes to the present day.  His focus though is on the past 13 millenniums since the last ice age, the time in which humans began to form civilization.

Diamond brings his excellent observations on the development of food production, the spread of ideas such as writing and agriculture, the evolution of germs and diseases, and the ability of some societies to support inventors or politicians to bear on this question.

We shall see how the issue fares.

"Miracle" Short Story - Part II

(Continued from the last post: "Miracle Short Story - Part I)

“I am an old man, I have nothing to fear,” replied Anatoly, now crouching over the block.  It reached up to his shoulders, rough edges, rough sides, a smooth round hole opening into it.  He traced hole's edges, feeling the thing’s heat through his glove.

Hastily, he withdrew his hand a second later. Some creature’s whiskered nose was timidly emerging.  With mounting surprise (and no small amount of disbelief) he watched as a grey head and white-fur-socked paws came into view.  A cat! An extremely tiny, white-grey kitten.

Padding weakly over his lead smock, into Anatoly’s lap, it stared up at him.  Green eyes, flecked with gold.

“How is it possible?” one of the engineers behind him cried out.

“Nothing can live in this,” another said, a doctor this time.  “Nothing at all, its, its …” he broke off.  Quietly this time, “Look at its ears.”

Anatoly, still caught by the cat’s gaze, didn’t respond.  With a now-ungloved, trembling hand, he traced the fur between its two left ears.  One pair was smaller, set in front slightly of the other.

He whispered, “Chudoturnyi”: miracle.  Surrounded by so much death, red sick trees, burnt houses, scattered concrete; still he stared into the cat’s eyes.  “Miracle” he whispered again.

"Miracle" Short Story - Part I

They were the first to enter the hot zone.  A team of doctors, physicists, and a technician from the reactor who had left just before the meltdown.  A small team of American’s was also part of the team, but so far, they had kept to themselves.  This was fine with Anatoly.  Not getting to know them meant saved time.  And any time saved meant less time taking 30 rads per second.

Unconsciously he smoothed the heavy lead smock pulled over his shoulders.  Though it slowed him down and let sweat pool under his arms, the weight was comforting, safe, secure.  To have something thick and dense between him and the radiation.  As a nuclear physicist, indeed as one of the top nuclear physicists, he had seen first hand the damage that invisible “radiatsiy” could do.  Men had come away from some of the first breakthrough tests looking sunburned.  Loss of fertility and leukemia were also common. They had been so careless in those early days.  Things were supposed to be different these days, precautions were taken, people were careful.

Not careful enough it seemed.

He was retired in the name of God! He’d thought he had left it all behind, but then a knock at the door… “There has been an accident.”

The harsh crackle of a geiger counter up ahead snapped him back to the present.  A slightly metallic grey block lay slightly askew a few meters in front of the group.  The youngest in their group, a doctor, Arkady, approached it, holding the now fully-awakened Geiger counter before him.  The constant crackling sound, a bit like endlessly tumbling gravel, rose into a flat tone.

“The meter has maxed out,” said Arkady, fear in his voice.
“It’s a piece of the control rod housing,” said one of the American engineers, “probably graphite,” he added.

Grunting, Anatoly nodded his assent.  Once again smoothing his leaden smock, he approached the object.

“You’ll kill yourself,” the American again.  The alarm in his voice was slightly muffled by his heavy mask.

Part II to follow soon.