Today we will go over Chapter 15; 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
Chapter 15 is the first chapter in part IV: Around the world in five chapters. In each chapter of this part, Diamond looks at the people of one (or more) continents. Chapter 15 is about Australia and New Guinea, which Diamond calls "hemi-continents".
In Australia, the natives never developed writing, farming, herding, metals, bows and arrows, chiefdoms or states. In New Guinea, they got most of these. But 40,000 years ago, this part of the world was actually ahead of the rest, with some of the earliest stone tools, by far the most advanced boats, and some of the earliest painting. What happened?
Australia and New Guinea are separated only by the narrow, and island-filled Torres Strait and Arafura Sea. But in all other ways, they are radically different. Australia is flat and mostly very dry. It has the most erratic climate and weather of any continent, with the seasonal pattern often disrupted by ocean currents. New Guinea is mountainous, wet, and with a stable climate.
These geographic differences led to differences in development in the two hemi-continents - New Guinea is divided into many many small tribes. Of the 6,000 languages spoken in the world, 1,000 are native to New Guinea, and they vary as much as Chinese and English.
But, when Europeans came to the region, they quickly developed a modern state in Australia, but were less successful in New Guinea than in any other region of the world.
Why?
One popular answer (at least among some Whites) is that the natives are stupid, or otherwise inferior. If you've been reading this series, it will not surprise you that Diamond does not find this answer reasonable. Nor will it surprise you that Diamond thinks geography plays a major role.
New Guinea is divided by altitude. It is primarily in the region between 4,000 and 9,000 feet in altitude that the major developments were made, but these regions do not form a contiguous whole - they are separated by lots of higher mountains and swamps. Thus, each small group of New Guineans developed in isolation. Australia, on the other hand, holds almost no regions that are what could be called geographically and climatically friendly to humans. Shortly after humans arrived, all large mammals and almost all large marsupials disappeared. Agriculture never took hold because a) The climate is one of the driest on Earth, b) The soil is less fertile than elsewhere on Earth, c) The climate is less regular than in any other continent and d) there are fewer neative plants than on other continents.
That is a brief summary of why both New Guinea and, even more, Australia, were 'primitive'. Why did the Europeans succeed in one and not the other? Again, geography and climate play key role. When Europeans come to New Guinea (even now) they get sick, and often die, from tropical diseases. In addition, the geographic features that make it hard for New Guinea to develop more 'advanced' civilization are not amenable to modern technology. We cannot flatten topography. Further, the tribes of New Guinea are often fierce, and the geography makes modern warfare very difficult. When Europeans arrived, it would have been hard for them to eradicate the natives as they did elsewhere.
In Australia, on the other hand, the climatic difficulties could be partially solved by modern methods - infertile soil can be fertilized; dry soil can be watered. Australia still has the least dense population of any continent (except Antarctica) but it is one that is much more similar to Europe than to New Guinea.
For the poll today - how many continents have you been to? I'll list North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. Antarctica is a continent, but not one with a native population.
In Australia, on the other ha