Civilizations: another case of scrabble? Discrimination 
Read books by Jared Diamond is doubly gratifying. First, because it is rare to see an essay addressing fundamental issues such as birth, growth and death of civilizations in the history of mankind. In 500 pages, Diamond reviews the last 10 000 years on all continents. Then these complicated subjects are usually treated under the prism of a single discipline: anthropology (Claude Levi-Strauss), economic history (Fernand Braudel) or philosophy. Diamond managed instead to mobilize all disciplines Scientists with happiness, genetic paleoanthropology, through geography and linguistics. I do not think I read an essay also multi-disciplinary.
This methodological fireworks made me want to share with you the startling conclusions from his book on "inequality among societies." In this essay, he tries to understand why mankind has developed at different rates in different regions of the world and why Europe has been more successful physically than Africa, America or Australia. Challenging course any racial argument, Diamond argues with quite convincingly I think it a form of geo-climatic determinism that sweeps a lot of misconceptions.
When you become a farmer rather than hunter-gatherer? Seen our twenty-first century, one might say that the first men were not very smart on the run all day after their snack, instead of quietly grow tomatoes and raise sheep. Why did it take so long for that hunter-gatherers include their mistake? And why do some people have they included particularly long after the other, the palm of stubbornness returning to Australian Aborigines which had not traded their boomerang against the butt of a plow when the English arrived to show them how.
This questioning by the naive assumption that the plants cultivated were always available around the world. Tragic mistake! Just look what like teosinte, the ancestor of corn to understand the misunderstanding (right, the evolution of maize, alleging
Wikipedia ).
Not only plants suitable for cultivation are very rare, but also their wild ancestors have been painstakingly selected by man before presenting the beginning of the beginning of agricultural interest. Indeed, natural selection often works backwards from our growers' interests:
- most wild plants are small seeds, hard shell, which are scattered to the four winds as they mature (which increases their chance of spread);
- few plants to germinate quickly and steadily: Most wildlife tend to wait for favorable weather to germinate, which makes random harvests;
- plants are generally much cell fibrous (Leaves, stem or trunk) and few seeds. Their efficiency is generally very low;
- they are often interbreeding, ie they intersect with each other. For
, drinking a plant in the garden, we must unravel the millions of years of natural selection: first find an annual plant, nourishing. Then you should select plants that produce patiently larger seeds, with a thin crust and not falling to the ground when they ripen. And for a chance to do that is better from a plant self-fertile if artificial selection is much more complicated. Brief Candidates are not legion. The proof: 80% of plants being consumed from a dozen species (wheat, corn, rice, barley, sorghum, soybeans, potatoes, cassava, sweet potato and banana) are those that were cultivated there are already thousands of years. As Diamond said, "The very fact that we are not able to tame one major food crop in modern times suggests that the ancients were really able to explore virtually all useful wild plants and domesticated all those worth it to be. "
On top of the ancestors of these species providential grows only in very few places in the world. Eurasia is pretty well off, but much less in the Americas while Australia and Southern Africa are almost free. Go to your garden when you have no seeds to plant!
Sources: left, diagram taken from SSFT blog, right from the book by Diamond, P206 The East-West continental Other physical factors such as deserts or mountains naturally isolate certain regions of the diffusion of agricultural practices. But according to Diamond, orientation of the continents also plays an important role in plant species are spread more easily between regions at the same latitude and have otherwise the same climate, at least the same cycle in day length. Thus all cereal crops in Europe and Asia were derived from the same ancestral stock. In contrast, the north-south orientation of the American continent would explain why the corn grown in Mexico has taken so many centuries back to the United States. Unlike the European continent, most cereal crops in the New World appear to have been discovered independently of each other.
And then the cattle? We suffer from the same historical myopia on the farm. The number of domesticated mammalian species is incredibly small! Only peaceful herbivores, territorial little, agreeing to breed in captivity and living in large flocks non-hierarchical social lend themselves to domestication. Thanks to a subtle alchemy of character that makes the horse is tamed when his cousins the zebra and the onager are not. Among the 148 non-carnivorous mammals weighing over 45 pounds, only 22 are suitable for breeding. For Besides, you get the best animals "tame" as the Elephants, but then it is tamed wild animals that reproduce poorly in captivity. Again, Eurasia is particularly well endowed, they included 13 of the 14 species of large mammals domesticated. Despite an abundance of wildlife, sub-Saharan Africa, the Americas and Australia were much less fortunate:
| Eurasia | Sub-Saharan Africa Americas | | Australia |
| Candidate Species | 72
| | 51 24 1 | |
| domesticated species | 13 | | 0 1 0 | |
The orientation of the continents also influences the distribution of farming practices (without Diamond's explanation appears to me very clear). The great east-west axis of the Eurasian continent would explain the massive distribution of the same animals (pigs, sheep, goats, cows, horses) from Ireland to the tip of China. In contrast, the Andean llama, turkey of North America or the water buffalo in West Africa have remained confined in a narrow band of latitude without diffusion into the North-South direction.
The cascade of progress These three environmental factors-availability of plant cultivation, animal domestication and the presence of east-west orientation of the continents formed by Diamond-ultimate causes of the rise of peoples of the Eurasian continent :
Part of the scheme is fairly intuitive: agricultural production sets people who abandon their old lifestyle of hunter-gatherers. Food surpluses allow companies to grow and organize more complex. By specializing, the individuals can innovate in their respective fields: writing is born of the need to account for production and trade. The explanation is fairly standard, but I was struck by the sequence of causes and effects reinforce each other:
- The popularizations settled have been easier to improve their farming techniques, which has helped to settle more.
- As the population increased with surplus food, food production has become the only way to feed everybody, hunting and gathering no longer sufficient, and the agricultural way of life is a process of self- strengthening (Provided you do not overuse the land).
- The more complex societies have more opportunities to improve living conditions and thus increase their size, which has forced them to become more complex even more.
- Specialization has fostered innovation, but the reverse is also true: scribes and blacksmiths became necessary after the invention of writing and metalworking.
- The use of domestic animals has greatly contributed to improving food production by providing fertilizer, transportation and assistance for muscular work in the fields. And on innovation it suffices to note that the wheel was invented in companies with animals capable of pulling loads (and even then not in the Andes).
- The east-west orientation of the continents and the lack of natural barriers has boosted all these factors in facilitating the dissemination of knowledge and technology between societies, through trade or war.
short, all these factors are multiplied together, such as catalysts in a chemical reaction.
Advantage: Europe! Unlike other continent, Eurasia had all the ingredients for success: plant cultivation, animal domestication and territory oriented East-West without major disruption in the middle, no wonder it took so ahead of America, Africa and Australia. In their conquest of the three continents, European explorers had the benefit of the equipment (steel), weapons, knowledge and means of transportation (horse). On top of that, they brought America infectious diseases that have decimated the natives. This is not a coincidence that one believes Diamond: most of our infectious diseases are inherited from those of our pets, which neither the Aztecs or the Incas had been previously exposed. Animal domestication would have provided a biological weapon radical indirectly to the conquistadores who were able to win at one against a hundred.
remains to understand why it was Western Europe and not Asia Minor (the cradle of civilization) and China, which imposed its model of civilization.
For Asia Minor, Diamond sends the issue quickly: the overexploitation of forests are rapidly depleted soils and processed as a land of plenty Iraq into an arid desert. It examines in detail in his other book ("Collapse") the mechanism by which companies are disappearing, to draw too much power in their environment.
China, victim of unification too early? The case of China is amazing. This region also had everything to succeed: a large area well served by long rivers and regions which are easily connectable to each other, nature is rich in plant cultivation and animal domestication, an ecosystem-resistant agriculture. All these factors have effectively facilitated the development of early food production and the rapid take-off of technology: we owe to China's invention of cast iron, paper, gunpowder, etc.. The company also quickly organized into kingdoms and unified into an empire from 220 BC. But according to Diamond, this unification (too) early paradoxically ended up penalizing its development: "The cohesion of China has finally become a liability because the decision of a despot was enough to stop an innovation that was the case in repeatedly. For example, while China was ready to conquer the world on its huge ships in the early fifteenth century, a power struggle suspended all naval expedition for centuries. Meanwhile, in Europe, Christopher Columbus wiped many refusals in each of the European powers until you find one who agrees to finance it. Fierce competition between countries of Europe has finally made a spur to innovation and technology diffusion, while China grew at the rate of the whims of central government. Closer to home, the ravages of the Cultural Revolution on the Chinese intellectual elite give an idea of the disastrous effects of such dependence. Unlike the spectacular successes of the one-child policy and the current economic surge is the positive side of such centralization.
Why is Europe remained divided as China was unified very quickly? Diamond's answer reads again in Maps:
coast of China is quite smooth, with few very large islands and regions are linked together so that none could free itself from the rest of the country. In contrast, Europe has several peninsulas quite isolated from each other and high mountains dividing the interior of the continent. These natural barriers have prevented the unification-political, linguistic, economic-of the different regions, but without impeding the diffusion of technology and ideas. Finally, the comparison between the history of a unified China and Europe illustrates perfectly the balkanized amplifying effects of a globalized society, for better or for worse.
theory of Diamond I like that because it is more probabilistic than deterministic: the combination of ecological conditions more favorable or less predicts the rate of development of a society and its power relations with its neighbors. Obviously human decisions play a major role in the course of history, but the analysis of Diamond is located at the scale of civilization, not the century. Or rather the scale of major historical developments: the early millennium, secular and then finally when all ten accelerates under the multiplier effect combinations. Unless as a result of political constraints (like China), ecological (the Fertile Crescent) and military (the invasion of the Roman Empire by the barbarians), this rate will slow to decline civilization. You tell me that it becomes an obsession, but I still see a reasonable explanation to the fact companies are growing very fast at one point, then after reaching a maximum growth to slow decline. Just as the biological evolution or the score in a game of scrabble I mentioned in the previous post
.
Sources: Jared Diamond:
From inequality among societies Related posts:
Innovations, Scrabble and logarithms who was zooming in on the concatenation exponential innovations
A promise is due. I attack this week in a famous rhetorical: the devastating impact of financial globalization on our model office. The bet is risky as unanimity is great about it. On the left, they condemn the ruthless competitive welfare states in a race to the bottom where the winners will be the lowest bidder in terms of social protection, redistribution, culture etc.. Right, & c # 39, is the revenue side that we perceive a dangerous place: to continue to attract foreign investment, governments postpone any tax burden on wages. Rising labor costs then causes unemployment and deficits. That we take the problem on the expenditure side or revenues, the conclusion is identical: globalization jeopardizes the funding of our social systems and once they arrive ruling parties of both right and left have no choice but to reduce the social ambitions of the state and pursue policies of austerity: c ' ; is the end of politics and the triumph of the market. Gulp! 
