Was he right?

No. He made the facutally wrong statement in the epilogue that there were no more "powerful empires" in the fertile crescent, after power had "made its shift irrevocably westward" after Alexander. He argued that the Incan empire was conquered by Pizzaro because it they were illiterate and not because the empire was in a civil war, the rest of chapter 3 of the book makes the same bizarre conclusions and recites things that are known to be myth.

You don't even have to believe in biological race to know that he's wrong

> long axis of a continent points being important seems pulled out of his ass
this also undermined by the fact that corn had no problem of spreading north and south across the Americas before Columbus arrived

Mansa Musa did have 12000 slaves with him on his pilgrimage to mecca

>tamed = domesticated

Blackmen couldn't even tame them.
They could easily be bred for domestication if there was a will.

>liberals accidentally stumble upon historical materialism
>use it exclusively to argue against racists

>New Guinea

it actually is a very interesting place tbf, I think the nigs there mutated into some sort of alien species.

No, he was not. He's widely regarded as a crank.

I think in all things, all details may matter. He highlights 2 things(inherent efficiency of local agriculture, and availability of metals), then admits that by his own logic Australia should have won, where abbos did the exact opposite. While his discussion about some historical bits are interesting, he was ultimately defeated the moment he started down such a narrow path of consideration.

some good points

plenty of agenda pushing, assumptions and frankly idiotic conclusions

lol no
It's pretty much recommended.

I dont give a shit what popsci readers think. No one in the academic fields he speaks on takes him seriously.

>popsci
So you give up explaining your points?

Sorry, racist, not sorry.

louisproyect.org/2009/04/24/jim-blaut-on-jared-diamond/
>Guns, Germs, and Steel is influential in part because its Eurocentric arguments seem, to the general reader, to be so compellingly “scientific.” Diamond is a natural scientist (a bio-ecologist), and essentially all of the reasons he gives for the historical supremacy of Eurasia and, within Eurasia, of Europe, are taken from natural science. I suppose environmental determinism has always had this scientistic cachet. I dispute Diamond’s argument not because he tries to use scientific data and scientific reasoning to solve the problems of human history. That is laudable. But he claims to produce reliable, scientific answers to these problems when in fact he does not have such answers, and he resolutely ignores the findings of social science while advancing old and discredited theories of environmental determinism. That is bad science.
>livinganthropologically.com/archaeology/guns-germs-and-steel-jared-diamond/
>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. Native armies were indispensable for Hernán Cortés to subdue the Aztec Empire and for Francisco Pizarro to topple the Inka.
livinganthropologically.com/2013/01/26/eric-wolf-europe-people-without-history/
>In 1997, Jared Diamond inexplicably dialed back our knowledge, in a book that still seems to captivate the world. But if anthropology wants to build on anything, wants to deliver a true understanding of the global transformations shaping our modern world, then Eric Wolf’s Europe and the People Without History remains the best place to begin.
it's trash

>he forgot to mention this detail that depends on the factor he explained
I hope you are kidding. The point of the book is to give the most influential factors, that will eclipse the others for their relevance.

did you read the whole article, and not just the small snippet I extracted?

No, but "tamed" would seem a nice first step."

Ostriches and bison have been domesticated.

To be fair, "easily" may be an overstatement. Look closely at Rotheschild's team -- he had to have a horse in the lead position to get it to work, a team entirely composed of zebras was not controllable.

He was a fascinating character, by the way, worth reading about.

I think "chance" is going to be even more critical.

In a world where modern humans had evovled, and began groping their way towards discovering things to make lives longer, better, richer, it would be really unlikely that societies in limited contact with each other would "progress" at exactly the same rate. Some would get a little luckier, move a little faster.

This seems sufficient to explain the historical record, to me, without the need for other factors being invented.

>Most people who reject his ideas never explain exactly how they are wrong.

As most people who accept them could not explain why they are right.

Neither of which is relevant -- what matters is what people who understand his points can make of them -- can they be supported, can they be refuted.

His ideas on domestication seem sufficiently disproven by subsequent additions to our pool of domestic animals that they are no longer supportable.

All I know about the book is that he mistakenly used "aardvark" instead of "aardwolf" on a couple of pages and I can get over it.

Also look at how motherfucking cute they are

Niggers are fucking subhumans people here refuse to accept science.
youtube.com/watch?v=0jFGNQScRNY

It got BTFO'd by The 10,000 Year Explosion.

Incas were superior to europeans though.

Incas were teached how to civ by a blonde guy (viracocha) and blonde people actually built the megalitic parts of their cities, the remnants of this people ruled over the incas.

We are operate in and are restricted by the limits of physical reality, so I really don't know why material circumstances and geography aren't considered the biggest fucking factor for pretty much everything.

All wrong. Several records show different "beginnings".

Incas were superior to europeans. History demonstrates it. Deal with it.

Somewhat less cute as adults. But then, so are lots of things.

I'll also report, in the spirit of Science!, that while Googling up my image I discovered that Aardwolf Rule 34 exists.

>Hey Nahuatl, look, I just invented wheel! What wonderful things can we do with it to make our lives better?

>Great invention, Camaxtli! We could pout them on a few children's toys, I guess, that's about all I can think of.

>Yeah... yeah, I guess this "the wheel" has no other real uses. Oh, well...

All wrong. As the first general spread of the wheel on anatolia was wheels under carts pulled by horses.

Inca superiority is a historical fact. Try again, subhuman.

There was no horses nor wheels in PreColumbian America. They were brought by Europeans. You are spreading wrong & fictional misinformation.

Is this chimp that dumb?hehehe Doesn't he know where is anatolia? Unless the chimp makes a worthy post, it won't get another cookie-post.

Inca superiority remains unrefuted. Get over it.

>There was no horses nor wheels in PreColumbian America.

There were wheels. They were very rare, used, rarely, on children's toys.

You are correct about horses.

tamed is not the same as domesticated.

...

Read thread

There were horses in precolumbian america, they were just hunted to extinction instead of being domesticated.

This

Related literature: Prisoners of Geography

Its good shit, and anyone who believes in positivism in general would appreciate it

>As most people who accept them could not explain why they are right.

I'm inclined to believe he is right because his explanations require the least assumptions and gambles to come up with viable explanations:

Ex: Two cultures that geographically bordered each other never exchanged ideas. Why?

Diamondian explanation: There was a big fucking mountain in the way and nobody could find a good reason to climb it just to teach the neighboring culture some math.

Constructivist explanation: All individuals in both societies for thousands of years never once had any urge to explore beyond their known world.

One explanation is grounded in the physical reality of the planet on which we live while the other is just fucking dumb. The tragedy is that most people believe the latter rather than the former to explain Africa's ethnic and ideological diversity while the former is way more viable and requires fewer assumptions on the whole

...

the problem is Jared either states the obvious or fixates on irrelevant factors in his book, not that his central premise is wrong

an analogy might be someone claiming 2 people are related because they both have blue eyes, they may well be related but that isn't compelling evidence

Hang yourself, faggot.

There were forms ancestral to horses in the Americas. There were no modern horses.

To clarify, there were species of Equus in the New World, which before the period became extinct before the general period of meso-American civilizations we're talking about.

E. ferus, a subspecies of which is the domestic horse, never existed in the New World until the Spanish brought the first specimens.