by AnnaS » Thu Feb 28, 2008 7:10 am
susie--you might be interested in a book I read recently, "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond. He asks the question why some cultures developed modern tools, writing and modern weapons, while others did not (Native Americans, Australian native people, etc.) He finds the explanation, and it's quite interesting, in the native availability of wild foods and domesticatable animals in each region. For various reasons, in North America there were no domesticatable animals except dogs--this meant no beasts of burden which means no easy way to cultivate large fields, etc. In regions where more modern cultures developed (mediterranean, europe, china) there was a native base of wild grains that allowed for easy collection of these foods (even thousands of years BEFORE the grains were domesticated 10,000 years ago) and several kinds of animals that could be domesticated. There are other parts to his thesis, I'm just simplifying it here. Interestingly, in North America and in Australia, there were also no suitable grains native to the area for either wild collecting or for domestication. (Corn came to north america fairly late in history.) There are also geographic reasons why in Asia for example new developments such as writing systems and food production knowledge could spread easily (east to west) and did, whereas relative isolation in other places prevented this.
What I love about his book is that he takes the idea of racism (inherent intelligence, abilities, development) and just THROWS it out the window completely. There is nothing "different" about people in primitive cultures, he explains, except what resources they have available. In every place where less advanced cultures imported food plants and other technology they quickly reached the same levels of expertise, creativity and civilization (for example writing) as other cultures that had this for thousands of years.
Fundamentally, food production (or lack thereof) drives all of the rest of civilization's development. Interesting! Of course, successful civilization has its down sides, and that's where the 'guns, germs and steel' comes in. The terrible disadvantage that native people in North America had was no immunity to the communicable diseases (which come from domesticated animal culture), which is why 90% of the population died long before the main influx of European settlers arrived here. I find this book well worth reading and thinking about!
--Anna