Today we will go over Chapter 9; we are reading one chapter a week.
I encourage this to be slow blogging - the very opposite of "breaking". I will leave this on my hot list for a week, so comment any time during the week.
When we get near the end of GGS, I'll start a poll for the next book; I am strongly leaning towards the book Ideas: A history of thought from fire to Freud.
Ground rules: I expect vigorous discussion. But I expect civil discussion. A sign I saw in a restaurant said
Be nice or leave
If you want to have a flame war, go elsewhere, please.
Previous chapters covered the domestication (if you will) of plants; this one discusses animals. Unlike the case with agriculture, though, domesticating animals was a clear and huge advantage, especially for large animals. They provide a huge array of benefits, including help with plowing, transport, and war; a source of milk and meat and skin; and other benefits as well.
The question then arises why some groups of people domesticated many animals, while others domesticated none. Diamond first asks whether it is something about the people or something about the animals - and gives a resounding vote for the latter.
It turns out that, while many animals can be at least partially tamed, only a few can be domesticated. The difference is that a domesticated animal is raised and bred in captivity, and bred for purposes which suit humans. In fact, only 14 large mammals have ever been domesticated, and only five of these are widespread through the world: Sheep, goats, cows, pigs and horses. 13 of the 14 originated in Eurasia or northern Africa; all of them were domesticated thousands of years ago. That is, no large animal has been domesticated since 2,500 BC. (And it's not due to lack of effort).
What about the others? To be domesticable, an animal must have a wide range of attributes - failure on any of them makes it virtually impossible. Diamond spells these out in the chapter, but briefly:
- Diet. The animal must be an herbivore, at least predominantly, because raising carnivores is too inefficient.
- Growth rate. The animal should be fast growing, or it is not worth raising
- Capable of being bred in captivity. Many animals have courtship rites that cannot be performed in captivity.
- Disposition. Some good candidates for domestication are simply too aggressive.
- Calmness. Animals which panic and run at danger are not domesticable.
- Herd structure. All the animals that have been domesticated have a dominance structure with one creature at the top. Men then step into that role
Thus, Diamond has already shown two geographic reasons for the dominance of the Eurasians - they had better plants and better animals.
That led to all sorts of possiblities, which we will get into in the rest of the book.
I don't have a big question for discussion, but I have a poll question: What's your favorite large domesticated mammal?, and in the comments, you can give reasons