Jared Diamond Confidential Reflections on Writing, Science, and Life
نویسنده
چکیده
Sometime after a trip to New Guinea in 1972, perhaps the world’s most noted ornithologist-physiologist-turnedevolutionary biologist and biogeographer set about “the modest task of trying to explain the broad pattern of human history, on all the continents, for the last 13,000 years.” In 1998, Guns, Germs, and Steel won the Pulitzer Prize. The book’s thesis, in short, is that specific geographic factors tipped the balance at the dawn of civilization. In Eurasia, which was blessed with many plants and animals suitable for domestication, geography fueled the rise of agriculture, which in turn allowed human communities to grow and differentiate into leaders, workers, and inventors. Exposure to domesticated animals’ germs also buttressed Eurasians’ defenses against potentially lethal infections. For these reasons, Diamond asserts, the people of the Fertile Crescent and their descendants more rapidly advanced and ultimately conquered the indigenous people of Africa, the New World, Australia, and the South Pacific. At the same time it explains global disparities, Guns, Germs, and Steel also refutes the notion that any given race is biologically or intellectually superior to another. In honor of this year’s 20th anniversary re-release of his famous work, the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene interviewed long-time University of California Los Angeles professor Jared Diamond. What follows is vintage, free-range Diamond, first captured on tape in November 2016.
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عنوان ژورنال:
دوره 96 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2017