Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jared Diamond discussed ideas from his widely-acclaimed 1998 book "Guns, Germs and Steel" during a lecture Monday, Oct. 21 in Alumni Gymnasium. Details...
Diamond’s lecture, sponsored by the General Studies Department and the Liberal Arts Forum, focused on the evolution of human history on different continents over the last 13,000 years. Diamond said the development of agriculture allowed human societies to settle down in a specific area, rather than living the largely nomadic lifestyle of hunters and gatherers, who had fewer children because of the difficulties associated in moving small children on a regular basis.
“Agriculture provided a fixed food supply,” Diamond said. “This resulted in a population explosion, because societies didn’t have to space out their births.” Agricultural societies resulted in the development of social classes and political centralization, Diamond said.
Diamond, professor of physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine, also said plants and animals have spread rapidly east and west across continents because climate conditions and the length of days are relatively similar east-to-west around the globe. It is more difficult for plants and animals to spread north and south because of the wide variety of climate conditions. He asserts that this basic fact of geography explains why cultures first grew and spread in Europe and Asia, continents that cover a large area east-to-west, compared to North America and South America.
Diamond’s field experience includes 17 expeditions to New Guinea and neighboring islands to study ecology and the evolution of birds. He has published more than 200 articles in magazines and journals such as Discover, Natural History and Nature.
While his lecture focused on the evolution of human history so far, a member of the audience asked Diamond to look into the future and predict where humans will be 100 years from now. Diamond said rather than focusing on the next 100 years, he prefers to look only 50 years ahead.
“We are presently on a course that is not sustainable,” Diamond said, listing pollution, waste and lack of regard for the environment as factors that could bring down human societies. “In the next 50 years, we will settle these things in a pleasant way of our choice, or they will be settled for us in ways that are unpleasant, such as war, disease and drought.”