Human Development
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Jared Diamond's above-entitled book seeks to offer a comprehensive explanation for why human development proceeded at different rates in different continents, especially after the end of the Ice Age in about 11,000 B.C. He finds the answer in a series of environmental factors, some geographical and others climatical, ecological and biological, with which parts of Eurasia was in particular blessed more than other continents. Those factors led to certain continental areas moving earlier to farming and herding and the production of food surpluses which led to the creation of other rudiments of civilization and which enabled some societies to achieve dominance over others. His thesis is most convincing in explaining how Eurasia obtained a headstart on other continents, much less persuasive, because of its unidimensional approach, which stresses physical as opposed to cultural and other non-physical factors as determinants of history, and falls short of an adequate explanation of major phenomena covered by his sweeping generalizations. The author documents that societies at lower stages of economic and political organization have fairly consistently been engulfed --i.e. conquered, destroyed or amalgamated by societies at higher stages of development, hunting and gathering v. farming and herding, egalitarian communal v. hierarchical states, and lower levels of technology, stone age tools and weapons v. their metallurgical counterparts.
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knowledge of farming and herding methods and of technology and of other human artifacts such as writing and pottery whereas north-south axes in Africa, Australia and the Americas tended to retard their diffusion or due to barriers like rainforest, desert or mountains block their transmission entirely.
Role of Food Production
Only in societies which had the favorable pre-disposing environmental factors mentioned above did the conversion from the hunting and gathering phase to agriculture and/or herding become feasible. The making of that transition facilitated the development of food surpluses which facilitated the specialization, the development of capital for use in public works such as irrigation projects, artisanry, trade and other skills such as bureaucracy and statecraft, warfare, writing and religion. This same food surplus supported the growth of dense population centers which could finance through taxes centralized states and wars of conquest as well as facilitate the spread of epidemics, which came from germs which originated from domestic animals and against which humans in populated regions developed an immunity. Those immunities proved to be potent weapons in struggles with less developed societies which lacked the
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Food Production, Ice Age, Thesis Book, China Mesopotamia, South Seas, Fertile Crescent, Middle East, Dark Ages, Equator Africa, Karl Marx, food surpluses, environmental factors, hunting gathering, farming herding, unidimensional approach, ice age, wars conquest, adequate explanation, food production,
Approximate Word count = 1320
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
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