Twelve thousand years ago, everybody on earth was a hunter-gatherer; now almost all of us are farmers or else are fed by farmers. The spread of farming from those few sites of origin usually did not occur as a result of the hunter-gatherers' elsewhere adopting farming; hunter-gatherers tend to be conservative.... Instead, farming spread mainly through farmers' outbreeding hunters, developing more potent technology, and then killing the hunters or driving them off of all lands suitable for agriculture.
History as well as life itself is complicated -- neither life nor history is an enterprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency. - Jared Diamond
History as well as life itself is complicated -- neither life nor history is an enterprise for those who seek simplicity and consistency.
- Jared Diamond
Civilization originates in conquest abroad and repression at home. - Jared Diamond
Civilization originates in conquest abroad and repression at home.
I personally am not conscious of my accent. - Jared Diamond
I personally am not conscious of my accent.
A blueprint for disaster in any society is when the elite are capable of insulating themselves. - Jared Diamond
A blueprint for disaster in any society is when the elite are capable of insulating themselves.
In much of the rest of the world, rich people live in gated communities and drink bottled water. That's increasingly the case in Los Angeles where I … - Jared Diamond
In much of the rest of the world, rich people live in gated communities and drink bottled water. That's increasingly the case in Los Angeles where I …
Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial in tipping the outcomes [of the various societies' histories] towards success or failure: long-t… - Jared Diamond
Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial in tipping the outcomes [of the various societies' histories] towards success or failure: long-t…
Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and ty… - Jared Diamond
Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and ty…
One person making a wrong decision affects the whole country. - Jared Diamond
One person making a wrong decision affects the whole country.
History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences am… - Jared Diamond
History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences am…
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