Heard some people saying that this is just a meme

>Epidemic disease only became a factor post-conquest. In Africa, India and South America native diseases hie malaria were just as deadly to Europeans as European diseases were to the indigenous peoples.
It is absurd to assert that disease was not a factor in the European conquest of the Americas. The Inca Civil War was caused by the death of their monarch by smallpox. He died before the Spanish even arrived in Inca territory. While the Europeans were definitely technologically superior, a united Inca force which was not being demoralized and killed by disease would have mounted a much more powerful resistance to Spanish invaders. Same goes with the rest of the Americas essentially.

>Also, it is now proven that seals and sea lions brought disease to the Americas, not Europeans.
I'm going to have to ask for a citation here pal

Before the Sunni/Shia split it is reasonable to view Islam in the lens of one civilization definitely, and you might be able to argue that they remained a civilization through much of the Ottoman Empire. I personally wouldn't argue that, but it's pretty close.

Suggested contributory causes for the localisation of the IVC include changes in the course of the river,[138] and climate change that is also signalled for the neighbouring areas of the Middle East.[139] As of 2016 many scholars believe that drought and a decline in trade with Egypt and Mesopotamia caused the collapse of the Indus Civilisation.[140]

you didnt even read the rebuttals did you?

>The Silk Road had existed for nearly two millenniums by the 15th century. Chinese silk has existed in Egypt since at least 1000 BCE. The silk road never penetrated the Sahara Desert, however.
a few silks that only royalty enjoyed isnt a significant cultural exchange. thats TRADE. literally everyone does this. you dont see egyptian style chariots in china and you dont see chinese art in egypt.

>Most Africans did not have access to these domesticated animals (nor the access to arable land to support them) despite their existence as far south as the Cape since 200 AD. This also is not to mention that by then Eurasians and North Africans had access to these domesticated animals for thousands of years already. As for North America and Australia, Diamond sufficiently covers in his book why the native animals quickly disappeared after humans arrived.
yep youre retarded. the point is they have large tamable animals, but did nothing with them. if you can tame one zebra you can domesticate them. period. africans simply did not do this and their 'civilization' overall feel behind.

>"Greatest conquerers in history" is fairly subjective, but this also is mischaracterizing Diamond's arguments. Sustaining a military conquest is a much more important part of the process of civilization-building than completing one.
wrong. jared is trying to downplay the advantages of natives so he doesnt have to acknowledge that the spanish were more effective at war. the mongols conquered plenty with minimal nomad tech. the huns did the same. the native americans could have easily ousted the european settlers at many points, etc.

>solid and logical

archive.org/stream/fp_Jared_Diamond-Guns_Germs_and_Steel/Jared_Diamond-Guns_Germs_and_Steel_djvu.txt

>in mental ability New Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners

You could equally claim Mongols are superior because they have Genghis Khan's genetics or that agriculture in a difficult environment requires more forethought and planning thus greater intelligence, these theories can't all be right. The book is littered with exclusion fallacies like this and to a layman who lacks a broad view of history they all seem like pivotal factors because they are basically right even if they don't prove the broader point.

>In case this question immediately makes you shudder at the thought that you are about to read a racist treatise, you aren't: as you will see, the answers to the question don't involve human racial differences at all.

Also it would be naive to ignore the enormous hypocrisy of this, it is obvious he has some sort of ideological bias, unless you want to argue he is a hero for opposing racism and should always be viewed positively and never criticized.

No it's absolutely not, the Ottoman empire didn't even encompass all the Muslims in the beginning or at it's height.

Jared why are you still arguing on here? Your book is shit.

The Silk Road was what enabled Christianity to reach China, and Buddhism to reach Afghanistan. Bowed instruments were invented somewhere in Central Asia and rapidly spread throughout Eurasia thanks to the Silk Road.

>Diamond is a geographer

Wrong, he's an ornithologist.

I have no clue why this book is so successful, I guess there's a lot of racists in the world but the kind of simplistic white supremacist garbage Diamond spews barely needs a rebuttal.

He didn't say that niggers are stupid.

>White supremacist garbage

Kek

>Europe was always destined to rule the world
>not white supremacist

There's a reason Diamond is hated by academia, and it'snot (just) because he's a terrible scholar.

>the society, culture, and way of life of a particular area.
>Muslims didn't have a similar society, culture and way of life
Political unity is not indicative of civilization. Islam provided enormous aspects of culture and social structures that would make the Muslim world a civilization.

It's a valid rebuttal. Diamond isn't an historian.

People that actually professionally dedicate their lives to the study of history didn't reach his conclusions. He didn't rebut their conclusions he just presented his own ideas.

>Europe was always destined to rule the world
>not white supremacist

He isn't, he says that the geographical situation in Europe allowed its residents the most favorable conditions. Clearly you haven't read the book. Just because a region is favored does not mean its people are inherently better than another.

Since I'm assuming you're stupid I'll put it another way. Take two farmers and make one plant in the grassland and another in the desert. The one in the grassland is destined to grow more crops, provided he doesn't blow it. It does not mean in any way he is a better farmer, just that he had better starting conditions.

I have read the book. Geographical determinism is a white supremacist doctrine, since it holds that European dominance is inevitable.

kys kid

Did you read what I posted? It doesn't contend anywhere that whites are better. Here's a good definition:

>White Supremacy: the belief that white people are superior to those of all other races, especially the black race, and should therefore dominate society.

Jared diamond never says that whites are inherently superior. Therefore it's not white supremacist. He doesn't say it is inevitable in the present tense, he just says it was given the conditions and purposes of geography at the time.

>Most advanced people in war technology not to mention ship and sheer manpower are destined to rule the world

At this time America checks all three, in the past Europe did. To deny this is to deny reality.

>Jared diamond never says that whites are inherently superior.

Irrelevant since his argument >implies it and because geographical determinism has been a mainstream of white supremacists for over 100 years. Also Diamond certainly DOES accept genetic variation in humans, he has written about how the Jewish overachieving in the West is largely genetic.

You have a source on the Jewish thing? Never heard that one ever. Also, geographical determinism is the only way yout can justify colonialism without resorting to white supremacism. If the Europeans were the same fundamentally and did not have favotable conditions, then it would be impossible to colonize the world in 400 years. Environmental determinism is the exact opposite of white supremacism and I think you'd be hard pressed to find white supremacists who en masse agree with environmental determinism.

explain why the west is superior then

People on here only argue against the book because it derails their case that genetic superiority was the sole factor in the rise of Europe. simple as that.

They don't want to admit that there were innate advantages for certain areas of the world based on the resources each region had on hand, and shut out and attack anything that suggests that the all holy R1b genome isn't some key to superiority.

>There is no such thing, just as there is no "christian" or "hindu" civilization

There is, though. In the case of "Christian" civilization people just often use "christendom" or sometimes mix it in with "western civilization". It's just taxonomy at the end of the day, it doesn't magically mean that "Christian" or "Muslim" or "Hindu" 'civilizations' didn't have sub-categories that were immensely distinct. Hell, the NAME Hindu just came from the name for how the muslim world referred to non-muslim Indians in general, religion notwithstanding, but still acts as a decent category when describing a diverse subcontinent quickly without getting bogged down in detail.

When someone says "the islamic world" it gives you an idea of what they mean, and if they need more precision they specify. What's important is that the "Christian World" and the "Islamic world" viewed themselves as highly distinct from one another, and religion was often a major aspect of identity to both for over a thousand years. I bet you a French and Polish peasant would just as soon self-identify as "Christian" than as an ethnicity.

You can disagree with the taxonomy and wish people were more precise, sure, but don't jump to a silly extreme and say anyone that uses the term "disqualifies themselves as a scholar", scholars don't need to be pedantic and needle detail in every circumstance, in some cases generality is necessary.

...

>The Silk Road had existed for nearly two millenniums by the 15th century. Chinese silk has existed in Egypt since at least 1000 BCE. The silk road never penetrated the Sahara Desert, however.

People traded from one merchant to the other probably a hundred times, nobody ever traveled from China to Egypt with silk on their mule.

Not him but there's three reasons.

1. Blacks are intellectually inferior to whites.
2. Asians are less empathetic than whites.
3. Some luck.

wow nice job normalizing white supremacy his..

>This tired ass picture
1. The Silk Road connects the entire continent, retard. Sub Saharan Africa does not lie anywhere near Egypt, in terms of distance, whereas the north american tribes were far too spread out for any meaningful cultural trading to happen.

2. This isn't an Argument he states. What Jared Diamond says is that you need good staple crops, of which Africa has none.

3. I'll give the OP that.

4. Eurasia did have more domesticable large mammals than Sub-Saharan Africa or the Americas, even if you wish it weren't so. And that said, all said African species -were- in fact domesticated.

5. Conquest does not imply long lasting rule. Horse nomads (of which Africa has none) has the potential to chimp out, once the population and civil unrest goes clinical. This is a trait that is foreign to Africans due to not only their breeds of horses, but also the soil and climate which made such huge martial cultures able to flourish in Eurasian plains.

6. It obviously did help, but it was not a deciding factor. my nigger Diamond didn't state this, either.

7. Retarded, yes.

8. Also retarded.

9. Bigger, yes. You would struggle to imagine a bigger unified area than Russia or China. Great advantages, yes. They weren't too hot for its' inhabitants to be efficient, and weren't too cold for agriculture to fail.

Oh, and Rice is a wonder crop.

>Malaysia, Tanzania, and Morocco are both totally the same dude!

>Europe is the king of the world because they have guns, germs, and steel
>Modern Africa is a despotic disease-ridden shithole because it has guns, germs, and steel
make up your minds already

I'm gonna try and refute those for good sport and not because I agree with Jared.

1: There was a significant degree of interaction between the tips of the Eurasian continent. Things like Sugarcane, rice, gunpowder, rice and a load of other crops traveled from East to West long before the 15th century. It is not like a single person with his invention or whatever had to travel the entire route himself. Intermediaries passed on and exchanged shit. In the 13th century Bejing had a European Bishop and in Fujian Italians established themselves in a small colony.

The Llama did not travel a measly few hundred kilometers north to the Mesoamerican civilizations while their writing did not travel the same distance south towards the Inca.

Prior to the 15th century Europe had more contact and exchange with China on the other side of Eurasia than two American civilizations just a few miles apart had.

2. I believe the argument was that an abundance of Potential crops was necessary, not that you need an actual abundance of crops.

3.Pretty sure this isn't even in the book, he's mostly talking about the fertile crescent.

4.

>Eurasia had more large domestic mammals
>Bbbbb..u...t.. South Americans had the llama

Christ could this guy not even read his own arguments

5. Fair enough though I believe he was talking more about permanent occupation and cultural changes rather than glorified raids.

6. How does this refute that diseases helped?

7. Here Jared is right but for the wrong reasons. The centralized Chinese imperial government did kill progress but I find it hard to blame it on geography.

I disagree with Jared's 100% deterministic theory but honestly his arguments themselves are not all that faulty.

Waste of dubs. Are you seriously fucking saying that acknowledging that different geographical regions make it easier or harder for their inhabitants to "succeed" (it's an arbitrary term, yes, but in the case of "guns germs and steel" this means having a high population, wealth, advanced technologies, and the ability to conquer other peoples) is racism? Are you out of your fucking mind?

>Europe is isolated from central Asia by the Alps, the Urals, the Caucasus, the Russian steppes, the Taiga and the Anatolian plateau.
>Alps
>being anywhere near Asia so they can act as a border
>Russian steppes
>implying they were a barrier and not a convenient highway on which countless Asian hordes invaded Europe for centuries.

>undomesticatable plant/animal
Diamond is a idiot and anyone who takes this just-so prattle seriously is a retard

>be me
>be mayan
>grow up seeing thunder blow shit up
>grow up seeing fire cook and smelt
>but the neighbors burned my house and my father, then raped my mother
>be working maize fields
>huge boats appear
>with guns
>gunboats
>get conquered
>ok

>be me
>be descendant of first guy
>things have been pretty much the same
>our king is from somewhere far away ok
>we got technology
>be working maize fields
>cachun comes and tells me to rebel
>sure fuck the spaniards
>spaniards come
>bring yo iron shit faggots we-
>FWOOOOOOOOOM
>some faggots with big sticks shoot thunder
>cachun gets his stomach assblasted into the fifth dimension
>lol fuck this shit I'm out

>white people
>discussing history

out pleb

Dubs actually understands

wtf are you on all islamic civilizations including the ottomans were quite similar and had more contact with each other than with outsiders

Perhaps if I post a picture of a tamed bear you might get that there's a difference between tamed and domesticated

what kind of lsd are you on right now

this guy is retarded on multiple levels

...

how much are you paid per post

The Burchell's zebra, and quagga (now extinct) were both shown to be relatively easy to domesticate.

Don't overgeneralize the "zebras can't be domesticated" meme.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebra#Domestication

>he's not a historian but an ornithologist
>he handwaves history in favor of his narrative
>his assumptions are all decades outdated and have been debunked for a long time
>completely shit on by academic reviews
It's garbage

No matter how much academia and the arm chair historians reeee, his book is overall pretty solid.

He at no point claims Europeans are superior/more advanced than any other people, merely that they were in a pretty cash starting spot with a lot of trade and the influx of new ideas that come along with that.

Most of the rebuttals against his book are strawmans or "he didn't mention situation x which is an exception" or he "isn't a historian" (as if only people with a 100k certificate can study and speak about a subject)

tl:dr he gets it mostly right

>Lol like who cares that academia shits all over it
>It's totally good even though those who are actually educated on the subjects say it's utter shit
(You)

not that guy, but the reasons academia shits on it are mostly pedantic and partially based in jealously that some outsider came in and wrote the most widely read and discussed historical book in like 50 years. I'm not a huge fan of the guy's writing style, but to dismiss his whole book as nonsense is silly. He makes a lot of good points, even if he does simplify some pretty complex events.

It's not rigorous, and academics are mad that GGS is presented as an academic history book rather than a pop history book because the author has a PHD.

It's very good as far as pop history goes. It's lacking as far as an academic study of history goes.

Neither of you have ever read an academic review of GGS.

t. butthurt history phd

I don't disagree with you on the pop vs academic argument, just that hating on the book has sort of become cool and trendy like hating nickel back or something. Most of the people who shit post about how terrible it is, have neither read the book or have an understanding of why it's "bad" other than reading some 200 character summary on reddit

Post your personal masters thesis about why GGS is bad then. I'm sure it's the same regurgitated shit as every other "review" of his work. Academia is just jelly

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baka cuck

It was easy to domesticate and train horses because they traveled in herds with leaders and whatnot. Almost all Zebras lacked a hierarchy and were therefore much harder to put to work

There you go

marklynas.org/2011/10/the-easter-island-ecocide-never-happened-response-to-jared-diamond/

livinganthropologically.com/anthropology/guns-germs-and-steel/

right2think.net/forum/race-and-anthropology/211-guns-germs-and-steel-debunked-in-a-few-lines

vnnforum.com/showthread.php?t=26248

imediaethics.org/special-investigations/jared-diamonds-factual-collapse/

Dude the first link you posted is a blog that literally starts with...

>Sadly, this thesis was not challenged because it so conveniently confirmed 18th century prejudice about superior (European) and inferior (everyone not European) societies.

Which Diamond never does, like at any point, ever, in his entire book claim or assert any notion of "white supremacy". Easter Island most certainly did suffer an ecological collapse, almost certainly human caused. We can analyze soil composition (Carbon 3 v 4) and roughly tell what sort of plants grew there, that's not a new thing either...it's also not exactly a novel concept in human history either. It's a phenomenon that is well documented with cultures all around the world.

I mean fuck if it triggers you too much to read bad stuff about POC or w/e, you can look at the deforestation of the British isles for an "evil white man caused ecological disaster"

and the rest of your linked articles are from fucking forums or dead links?

There are valid criticisms of his work by academics, but none of these are them.

Try harder.

>all these autists falling for obvious bait

>convenient
Not for travel lol

...

I agree with the general idea, but I'd say he is somewhat mistaken in comparing early in the book the fates of different Polynesian islands to the fates of continents in order to dispel the myth of racial determinism. Polynesians are not separate races. While his method there shows the effect of geography, it doesn't refute the possibility of race as an influence.

domestication is just taming successive generations of animals

That crazy russian guy showed you can domesticate foxes in something like 30 generations, zebras would just take a while due to their longer lives. We could have domesticated zebras by the time we get old, if there was the demand for them

...

I have yet to see a coherent take down of Jared Diamond.

Let's go with the second link

>against some of the more noxious forms of racist superiority and Eurocentrism. He has helped to bring these ideas to a wider public, who may not have otherwise considered large domestic animals and longitudinal trade gradients. Guns, Germs, and Steel is actually “disguised as an attack on racial determinism”
>What Diamond glosses over is that just because you have guns and steel does not mean you should use them for colonial and imperial purposes
Why are Diamond's critics always revealed to be political hacks who try to pretend his thesis is wrong because it threatens their personal politics?

>But Guns, Germs, and Steel is not about nuance or particularity. It is a one-note riff. Whatever there is to be explained–guns, germs, or steel, as well as writing, military power, and European imperialism–everything is about early adoption of agriculture, ...Diamond has lots of cool stories and anecdotes, but it always goes back to the same factors.
Otherwise known as having a coherent central thesis. Which this article lacks.

>Diamond’s modest re-telling of traditional domination histories is factually wrong and blatantly misleading.
This is the closest thing I could find to an actual argument. There was no western ascendancy and domination. This is so hilariously flat out historically wrong and delusional I don't know what else to say.

>Diamond’s account seriously underplays the alliances with native groups that enabled European forces to conquer and rule. After some initial victories, which Diamond lavishly describes, thousands of natives joined the tiny European garrisons
Trying to solidify the point, European technological superiority is not real/important because they cheated by using alliances and diplomacy - which non westerners apparently never do in conquest. Jesus.

It's just more bullshit from here. + one other argument that environmental determinism is icky.

Guns, Germs, and Steel BTFO'd.

amren.com/news/2008/06/squaring_the_ci/

>huge boats appear
>with guns
>gunboats

heh