The main problem that Diamond is addressing in this book
is "Yali's Question." It is the issue of why European societies have come to dominate
the world.
Yali was a native of New Guinea who asked
Diamond why it was that white people had so much wealth compared to the natives in New
Guinea. Diamond expands that question in this book to ask why European societies have
become dominant in so many (economic, political, technological, etc)
ways.
In order to answer this question, Diamond then turns
to a huge variety of evidence. Most importantly, he looks at geographic factors such as
the presence of plants and animals that could be domesticated and the length of the
"axes" of the various continents. Diamond uses these geographical factors to try to
account for the fact that European societies have come to dominate the
world.
No comments:
Post a Comment