Guns, germs and steel

He in fact uses the example of Zebras being untamable... basically he did not research parts of his book to the needed level.

youtube.com/watch?v=etV8YAnyjcE
>Untamable.
Rotschild did tame them and used them to pull chariots, and you can see even girls can mount zebras.

It's rubbish. Diamond is an ornithologist, not an anthropologist or historian, and his ignorance fo history is extremely profound. No-one working in the field has accept environmental determinism for generations, certainly the environment matters but Diamond extrapolates to an absurd degree.

>And in those past threads someone did show that zebras actually are way more aggressive and harder to tame than horses,

This is abject nonsense. The ancestral horse, the one that was actually domesticated, was as aggressive and skittish as any other wild animal. Horses today aren't, because they've been selectively bred for thousands of years.

Typical after the fact claptrap

>The ancestral horse, the one that was actually domesticated, was as aggressive and skittish as any other wild animal
Evidence is needed. Because otherwise anyone can claim the ancestor of any domesticated animal was aggressive and skittish and that anyone who was too dumb to domesticate them is inferior. Disregard most animals have only been domesticated once, so that means there is some kind of domesticating ubermensch class of humans somewhere.

I thought zebras were unable to be domesticated due to their weak spines and inability to pull equipment/ hold the weight of people, and the fact they go insane after a few years in captivity?

Przewalski horse, they are agressive cunts than the mongolians avoid every time they see them. And the wolf was domesticated two times than I'm aware.

Actually zebras are quite strong for they weight, like ponies, and horses actually don't do well with weights even after all this time of breeding. Captain Horace Hayes broke a wild stallion of Mountain zebra in two days, he even let his wife to mount it to take photos. He considered Burchell's zebra easy to tame and a great start for domesticating them, or the Quagga ones than are now extinct (the later were very tame and friendly for zebras) but of course after the invention of automoviles they didn't have the motive for domesticating them.

> Disregard most animals have only been domesticated once

Based on currenty research dogs were domesticated at two to three different places in Eurasia, and the house cat at the two places.

I think we need another 2 billion threads about it.

Next up: "what does Veeky Forums think of John Green?"

youtube.com/watch?v=wVLY_5VBxao
Also a Zebra in trail riding. You can search for rotschild chariot-pulling zebras. And I'm sure some colonial fuckers used them for jumping obstacles.

And for the ones than bitch about the Zebras skitishness, lot's of old horses would go nuts with a clipper... youtube.com/watch?v=2OlHOIzQn3c&index=5&list=PL91C074C43897097F
Zebras aren't domesticated because no one is serious enough to try.

Tame is not the same as domesticate.

Tame is a good start tough.For domestications you need time and choosing who the animal will be breed with, and choosing for breed the best prospects like the Russians did with Foxes than were domesticated in 50 years of selective breeding. Zebras pick all the domesticated animal traits,pack animals, are as easy to breed as horses (even produce hibrids like mules) and are very intelligent, and they have a very powerful bond nature, they will love another horse, human or dog if imprinted right and eat grass, leafs and even bark.

How do you think an animal is domesticated, idiot? First step: Tame a breeding pair.

I haven't red this book, but does he really claim that zebra, an animal that looks almost exactly like a horse, is 100% untameable, and that the ancestor of the modern horse was the same as the modern day domesticated horse?

Are you claiming otherwise? Because that's racist.

Zebras are more like donkeys tough, not horses.

>How do you think an animal is domesticated, idiot? First step: Tame a breeding pair.
t. doesn't know how an animal is domesticated

funny that you mention donkeys, cause they are an african species that was tamed and domesticated

Like this. excuse my english because I learned it in Veeky Forums, but instead of meme answers could you refut my points there?

Yup, the Egyptians did, doesn't it disaprove diamonds point?

Originally, its habitat stretched from Marocco to Somalia.
And it would be very strange that both of the very close relatives of zebra, donkey and horse, can be domesticated, while zebra cant, wouldn't you agree?

At this point, I think people just repeatedly make these same threads out of boredom or to troll retards. That, or this board is a reflection of our contemporary postmodern society etc etc

he has an obvious left wing ideological bent and you don't need to be a /pol/ fedora tipper to see it

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

>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.

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

though at least it motivated him and others to think about history

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Domesticated_Red_Fox

Muh domestication.

I don't have to go home and watch it on my iPhone and it will be the same exact opposite of the best thing to me and you will be a great day for a while ago when the time of day and night in the morning to you in my life and death of a lot more fun and I don't think I have no idea what I want a boyfriend and the first time I get to the game and I love everything and we will be a great day and night in the morning is the only way to the game and I love you so much for the next two years of my life .

Why does everyone say this book is racist. From what I remember he says that it was basically the environment that made large-scale civilizations in *wherever* not possible.

>it's all environmental
>except New Guineans and Jews are genetically superior

Not that I mean, obviously what he says there is racist, but I mean lots from the left/liberal camp say it is racist against non-westerners, or rather the concept of geographic determinism is.

It's racist because it favours the white man. It's as simple as that. Poor non-whites never had a chance.

Yeah, that's racist.

It's hilarious how a book written by a leftist jew with the explicit goal of "debunking" genetic determinism is nowdays considered "racist". You can't make this shit up. The left/jews have gone so insane even making a judgement on the worth of a culture is considered shitlord "supremacist" behavour

Saying that New Guineans and Jews are genetically superior aren't racist?

It's "racist" by normie standards but the central premise of the book is essentially an anti "racist" race denialist jewish fantasy. Culture is determined by genes and IQ

You can't judge anything in post-modern identity politics, except white people. Everyone is right because they think they are, except white people.

It's actually fascinating how gender identity politics is like some bizarre dualistic mystic cult. The individual is always right because only they truly know the truth but if the physical body isn't the truth then it must lie in the soul. It's a fucking religion.

>Culture is determined by genes and IQ

Yeah it makes much more sense that the only difference between Victorian England or 5th century BC Athens with the cannibals of Papua New Guinea is the lack of horses.

Also it's hilarious how (((Diamond))) talks about Singapore which despite being on the Equator it is a prosperous booming megacity. I am sure the fact that 90% of its population is ethnic Chinese has nothing to do with it.

...

*tips fedora*

>Yeah it makes much more sense that the only difference between Victorian England or 5th century BC Athens with the cannibals of Papua New Guinea is the lack of horses.

PNG didn't exactly have contact with the outside world. The biggest catalyst for advancement is taking ideas and technologies from others and improving upon them

>Also it's hilarious how (((Diamond))) talks about Singapore which despite being on the Equator it is a prosperous booming megacity. I am sure the fact that 90% of its population is ethnic Chinese has nothing to do with it.

Or it could be that a small city state made up of banks isn't comparable to a full sized country that has to balance a different set of issues

>PNG didn't exactly have contact with the outside world

Why not? It is an island with an extensive coastline close to many densely populated areas. What stopped Papuans from trading and exchanging ideas? What comes first the chicken or the egg?

>that a small city state made up of banks

Singapore has a larger population than 90 countries and territories. Also the economy is based on logistics and trade. It takes amazing inginuity to create such a hub with such a complex economy. But I am sure the only reason it emerged is pure luck and coincedence.

"Wolves" (they were more of a wolf like species) and cats both pretty much domesticated themselves, they came into human camps/areas because of the easy access to food (scraps for dogs and mice hiding in grain storage for cats). The individuals that were willing to risk being near humans were naturally more domesticable. So that right there pretty much discounts the "all animals are aggressive" idea when it comes to cats and dogs.

not a "libcuck", I frequently BTFO lefties here

However this makes perfect sense, in Papua New Guinea you can only grow taro and a few motley spices, fruit and vegetables. There just isn't enough surplus.

Even in Greece ~90% of the population were farmers and Athens only grew because it was a trade center which could import grain from elsewhere.

>I am sure the fact that 90% of its population is ethnic Chinese has nothing to do with it.
Ahah, what? It's full of Malays and Indians.

GHANS GURMS 'ND STEEL IS BAD M'KAY

I won't pretend to be an expert in tropical agriculture but something doesn't seem right. Java which is next door had a large population with intensive agriculture trade etc.

>Athens only grew because it was a trade center which could import grain from elsewhere

Ancient Greece specialised in products that it had a comparative advantage. Olive oil and wine in exchange of wheat from the Black Sea and Egypt. Division of labour is a sign of an advanced civilisation.

3/4 of it is Chinese.

>B-b-but
No dude.

Part of New Guinea is on the same latitude, but there must be differences in topography, rainfall, soil fertility etcetera.. According to the koppen climate classification scheme most of Java is tropical monsoon and tropical wet and dry as opposed to tropical rainforest.

Regardless, Java always had relatively low population until the 19th century.

Java's rulers would have been preoccupied with maintaining political power, fighting wars, spending on their palaces and temples. Any investment in science and the economy had high risk and low returns (unless they were rebuilding after a war/disaster, in which case there would be few innovations) and they had far less to invest than say some large city in more productive regions of the world.

Papua is notoriously poor in nutrients in the soil. The plant and animal life have evolved to make do with very little.

You can improve the quality of the soil with appropriate farming practices. And I doubt the returns were so low it made farming uneconomical. It's like you are trying desperately to find an environmental factor to explain the cannibal hunter gatherers when there is none.

There's a good reason carnivorous plants are rampant in Papua. Hell some attract rodents with delicious nectar so they'd shit directly into their trap pouches. Otherwise the vital nutrients might go to something else.

>It's like you are trying desperately to find an environmental factor to explain the cannibal hunter gatherers when there is none.
oh fuck off, even if you introduced steel and water buffalo to Papua New Guinea in 1 AD it still wouldn't be as productive as many other places in the world, you're the one clutching at straws

Completely ex post facto bullshit. You have no idea how it happened and neither does anyone else.

We don't even know why these animals were first tamed. As he says in the book, the perspective of a early farmer or hunter gatherer looking at a wild animal was drastically different than when we look at it. We have foresight

Every fucking time.
>muh zebras

What is this contrarian denial, lol.
>u can't know nuthin

>Meme anwer.
This is a thread about what people think of GGS, and why is shit. He said Zebra are untamable, and thus impossible to domesticate, we have said we this argument is horse shit. At least point what part of the zebra being tameable and a good starting point for domestication are wrong instead of projecting so much.

Pretty sure politically I'm what most of you fags would call a gommie, but when I first read the book it was as clear as day Diamond loves psudeo-science. Still amazes me that my old middle school now gives their students copies of this trash.

How come most critiques of GGS are anons who just happens to be experts?

t.butthurt redditor virgin

Papua has been covered by a rainforest for a very long time. Rainforests are not the best land for farming. Just ask Brazil and the Congo.

Amazon natives actually had some way of making extremely fertile compost but alas they all died from Spanish diseases before encountering Spaniards themselves.

Am I right to believe that the reason why Diamond focused his argument on whitey being 'racis' and that its all whitey's fault because geographic determinism was seen as a racist belief 40 years ago?

Also what is your belief as to why Africa fails so hard?

I think its isolation. Subsaharan Africa, being cut of from much trade in the world suffered for it. The parts of Africa (West Africa and East Africa) prospered for a time because they made contact with other civilizations, such as Mali and the trans-saharan trade and East Africa's conversion to Islam opened up the Islamic world to them. Look at the New world, they were very much lacking in technological progress and this is because they were cut off from the rest of civilization. China under the Ming dynasty suffered because they started looking inwards to preserve culture. Similar to Japan as well, but lucky for them the US forced them into interaction with the rest of the world.

>Spanish disaes.
Euro-Asiatic and African disaes bruh, no one of the disaes was endemic of Spain proper.

Jared Diamond says something in the book about African megafuana being more skittish because the environment is so "tough". There are lions and leopards and huge crocodiles and hyenas and painted dogs

But the Americans, like the Mayan, Incas and Aztecs triple alliance or the Missisipians prospered a lot, having giant cities and having very civilized and stratified societies of they own. They only lacked in military power if you compare them to Spain and other Euro-Asiatic powers than were so focused in war, but they would have wrecked any sub saharan empire if only for they good logistics and top crops were.
Europe had saber tigers, hyenas, cave lions, wolfs, bears and mortal winters until not so long ago. Be times of the Romans we killed nearly all of them, but they were biggers and meaner than african megafauna.

>counterfactual history
>false claims
>wrapped in a nice pretty bow of geographical determinism
It's wrong in a lot of ways.

He also assumes that Africa doesn't have fucking cows which is false.

>Europe had saber tigers, hyenas, cave lions, wolfs, bears and mortal winters until not so long ago. Be times of the Romans we killed nearly all of them, but they were biggers and meaner than african megafauna.
Dogs were tamed from a wolf like species possibly up to 30,000 Years ago. But by the time early farmers came to Europe most of the megafauna carnivores had died out. There were still normal lions, but I think only in certain places and in far less number than in Africa.

>He also assumes that Africa doesn't have fucking cows which is false.
Buffalo=/=Aurachs

>There were still normal lions, but I think only in certain places and in far less number than in Africa.

At least in Greece and Anatolia.

Spain too. El cid found one of the last if I recall well.
Yup, but the genes of wild animals don't change that easily, and 10.000 years is a blink. Euro-Asians animals were hunted be large predators like African ones, and bigger ones at that, so that argument of Diamonds, like a lot of others, is poorly investigated.

Aurochs are wild animals, Africa had domesticated cattle from very early on.

>Yup, but the genes of wild animals don't change that easily,

The Soviets domesticated a species of Siberian Fox in a single generation.

It's for the mentally defecient

No, I mean actual fucking cattle. The largest cattle breed in existence is from the Rwanda/Burundi area. Fucking educate yourself before you make yourself look like even more of an idiot.

Cows are descended from auruchs and they were not domesticated in Africa. Not sure if you know that already but I thought you didnt in my original reply

>they were not domesticated in Africa
Holy shit, yes they were. Europeans didn't bring cows to Africa.

They weren't domesticated in Europe or China either, so what? Subsaharan Africans have had domesticated cattle, sheep and goats for well over 2,000 years.

10,000 years isn't a blink when the environment is rapidly changing, like it did after the ice age. And I left out that another piece of this argument argument of his is that humans were hunting in Africa for millions of years, giving African animals a lot more time to become adjusted to them

I didnt read what you were replying to. oops

Europe didn't invent the type of agriculture (wheat/grains farming) that went along with cattle, they just adopted it. China's agriculture system (rice) perhaps didn't mesh with cattle. The did domesticate water buffalos though. I'm assuming that cattle were first used to plow before being farmed for meat and milk. But Idk I'm ignorant.

Middle East you fuck

Middle East didn't bring cows to Africa either.

I don't know what your point is and, I suspect, neither do you. Contrary to Diamond's ignorant assertions, Africans DID have domesticated animals and agriculture, from very ancient times. Also, Africa DID invent agriculture independently, unlike Europe, as well as having access to the same crops Europeans had (albeit wheat doesn't do well in tropical climates). Diamond is simply wrong in this, as in so many of his claims.

Anatolians farmers did, the one than domesticated cattle in the Taurus mountain. African cattle was mixed with Indian ones than were more resistant to drought tough.

Except they fucking didn't. Cattle are indigenous to Africa.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanga_cattle

I think you could make the argument that one of sub-Saharan Africa's problems was that it was isolated not only from the rest of the world, but also that it's A) fucking huge and B) merciless to traverse. I remember watching a documentary about trucking in the Congo, and how it took them weeks to travel 50 miles, and this is with modern motorized transport. Imagine how that must have been for people with only stone tools. I don't know very much about this subject, but I imagine there wasn't much in the way of inter-African long distance trade going on south of the Sahara, and thus not as much spreading of ideas and innovations within the continent.

It isn't conclusive, the modern breeds are heavily mixed with Taurus and specially indicus, so we can't be sure of the origine of the breed because we don't have enough bones of ancient cattle to know... So until then it's only an hipotesis, the native origin.