Human Development

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.

Related Essays

5 Stages of Human Development The purpose of this paper is to delineate and discuss several stage theories of human development, namely psychosocial, cognitive, psychodynamic, existential .... (5107 20 )

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT IN EDUCATION Introduction The The purpose of this paper is to explore human development in education by analyzing its importance to the classroom, and problems that can occur when teachers .... (1737 7 )

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT IN EDUCATION Introduction The The purpose of this paper is to explore human development in education by analyzing its importance to the classroom, and problems that can occur when teachers .... (1740 7 )

Biological and Environmental Factors and Human Development The following presents the topic of the ways that biological and environmental factors affect human development. A review of literature .... (2436 10 )

Human Development Issues This paper examines human development issues associated with young male sex offenders aged 18 and 40 years, as well as the effectiveness of therapeutic .... (6716 27 )

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

Category: Science - H