How did humans become so different from other animals in such a short period of time?
Why has human society developed so differently on different continents over the past ten thousand years?
Why do some societies lead to self-collapse, while others continue to flourish for hundreds or even thousands of years?
……
Have these "big human problems" ever made you think deeply?
The blockbuster author that Ashin is going to introduce today, he was fascinated by these questions as a child, and now that he is in his old age, he still has not stopped learning to explore the answers to these questions.
He is Jared Diamond, professor of physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, and a historical geographer, ornithologist, member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and so on.
He is one of the few contemporary thinkers to explore human society and civilization.
He was recognized by the public through a work that is regarded as a classic, "Guns, Germs and Steel".
In addition to these shining titles, Diamond's most admirable is the span of his ideas - it can be said that it is ancient and modern, interdisciplinary, and integrated.
Last year, Ashin also launched Diamond's new work "Upheaval: The Turning Point of Human Society and National Crisis", and many readers were immediately "circled" by this wise grandfather!
On the occasion of the New Year of 2022, Ashin launched a new Chinese translation of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, Collapse, The World Before Yesterday, and Upheaval.
The new edition of the book has been revised, the quality of the translation is quite guaranteed, and Diamond has also written a long preface specifically for Chinese readers in light of the present.
Let's take a look at diamond's video recorded for Chinese readers, remember to like it
Welcome to the world of Super Schoolmaster
Jared Diamond was born in Boston in 1937.
Diamond, who has been extremely curious since childhood, has grown up completely as a "cultivation of a bully":
Literacy at the age of 3;
Learned to play the piano at the age of 6;
Began observing birds at the age of 7;
Learn Latin at the age of 11;
Learn German at the age of 16;
He then entered Harvard University to study medicine;
I went to Cambridge University to study for a Ph.D. in physiology...
Diamond's reason for becoming a well-versed, interdisciplinary thinker is very interesting.
From an early age, Diamond decided that he would pursue a career as a doctor or a medical scientist, so he spent much of his time in his studies on a wider range of hobbies – such as studying Russian, German literature, composition, accordion, motivational psychology and astronomy.
His psychology is probably: "Anyway, there is a lifetime to do scientific research, it is better to play something else first." ”
After completing his Ph.D., Diamond taught at UCLA, where he studied a small organ, the gallbladder.
However, presumably because Diamond was so gifted in every field that he thought of devoting the rest of his life to the study of the gallbladder, a feeling of uneasiness grew in his mind, which was almost a "career crisis" for him. (Ashinos: This may be the unique annoyance of xueba)
In 1964, Diamond and friends organized a trip to study birds on the large tropical island of New Guinea, north of Australia.
"The first trip to the island of New Guinea in 1964 was decisive for my life. Once you've been to the island of New Guinea, you'll feel eclipsed by the rest of the world. ”
The island of New Guinea is located near the equator, but the island's mountains are as high as 5,000 meters above sea level. There are only three places in the world where snow and glaciers can be seen on tops near the equator, and the island of New Guinea is one of them.
At the same time, there are a large number of beautiful birds here.
Here, Diamond developed his second career, studying the ecology and evolution of birds on the island of New Guinea. Later, he became famous among ornithologists for rediscovering the long-extinct yellow-fronted gardener bird on the island of New Guinea.
In the years since, Diamond has visited the area 31 more times.
While the rest of the world was already enjoying the benefits of industrial civilization, the island of New Guinea was still littered with primitive tribes.
Standing in this "isolated" land, Diamond pondered the question: Why didn't the obviously intelligent New Guineans develop writing, writing instruments and metal tools like the rest of the world?
The question lingered in Diamond's mind for a long time, and he eventually wrote the classic Gun, Germ, and Steel, answering it.
Published 25 years later, it is still a classic
Refreshed the "world view" of countless people
Although the trip to the island of New Guinea planted the seeds of thinking in Diamond's heart, the idea of Writing popular books that really led to Diamond's idea of writing popular books stemmed from two events that happened in the 1980s.
The first was that he received a call from the MacArthur Foundation, the largest nonprofit organization in the United States, and they decided to give Diamond a 5-year bonus to fund any research he wanted to do.
Another thing was that in 1987, his twin sons were born. The birth of his children made him realize that the seemingly distant future he did not care about would be closely related to the lives of his family.
"I want to create a better world for my kids, so I need to start bringing the world's most important and concerned issues to the public, not just for gallbladder experts and new guinea bird experts."
In this regard, Diamond embarked on the path of popular writing, and since 1991, he has published several books. In these writings, he gathered his knowledge in different disciplines, including biology, history, anthropology, genetics, and linguistics.
One of the most representative books is Guns, Germs and Steel.
Guns, Germs and Steel
by Jared Diamond
January 2022 CITIC Publishing Group
How influential was this book?
As soon as it was published abroad, it was well received by readers, and it also won the Pulitzer Prize in the United States and the Popular Science Book Award in the United Kingdom, which can be said to be a classic.
Since its first introduction to China in 2000, different versions have accumulated more than 13w+ people "want to read" on Douban, maintaining a high score of 8.9 and occupying the 146th place in the Douban Book Top250.
This book answers one of the most important questions in human history: Why have human societies evolved so differently on different continents over the past ten thousand years?
And Diamond summed up the core of his book in this sentence:
"The history of the various ethnic groups unfolds on different trajectories, and this is due to environmental rather than biological differences."
This environmental difference, first of all, is the difference between continents in terms of species of wild flora and fauna suitable for domestication.
For example, agriculture only originated independently in parts of the world (including China but not Europe), and agriculture brought about the development of metal tools, writing, and the central government.
Therefore, the first areas to domesticate animals and plants have the opportunity to occupy the development.
Centre for the Origin of Food Production
Source: Guns, Germs and Steel, CITIC Publishing Group
The second difference is that the axis of the continents is different, resulting in differences in the speed of food production.
Eurasia, for example, has the most vast land mass in the world at the same latitude, so it has the conditions to spread domesticated plants and animals rapidly.
The main axis of the continents
So historically, on the east-west axis of Eurasia, grain traveled eastward from the Philippines to Polynesia at a rate of 3.2 miles per year, while at the other end, on the north-south axis of the Americas, corn and beans spread north from Mexico at a rate of less than 0.3 miles per year.
Differences in the speed of food transmission have led to differences in the development of human society on various continents.
It is worth noting that Diamond's views in Guns, Germs and Steel are often mistaken for "geographical determinism."
Geography clearly has some kind of influence on history, but Diamond argues that the question to be answered is the extent of this influence and whether geography can account for a broad pattern of history.
In the book, Diamond draws on several scientific disciplines that seem unrelated to human history to take a fresh look at these issues.
For example, the biogeography of design agriculture and its primitive wild species involves the behavioral ecology of livestock and their primitive wild species, the molecular biology of human pathogens and their related animal germs, the epidemiology of human diseases, and genetics, linguistics, archaeological research, and so on.
Therefore, everyone who has read this book has not only gained knowledge of geography and history, but also acquired a way of thinking about the world from multiple dimensions.
In addition to the classic "Guns, Germs and Steel", Ashin will also launch professor Diamond's other works!
Collapse: How Society Chooses Success or Failure
The "collapse" mentioned in this book refers to the rapid decline of the population of a certain human society, the sharp decline in political, economic, and social complexity, and eventually the collapse. This is not uncommon in human history, as exemplified by many ancient ruins.
So why do some societies prosper and continue, while others decline?
Diamond compares the rise and fall of past societies such as Easter Island, Mayan civilization, and Viking society in Greenland, and analyzes the development and plight of modern societies such as Rwanda, Haiti and Dominica, China, and Australia horizontally.
Today, modern society is also facing a crisis, can economic development and environmental protection not be combined? Diamond is a wake-up call: our understanding and choices about this issue will determine the rise and fall of today's society.
The World Before Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? 》
Is traditional society a barbarian land full of conflict and chaos, or a paradise to enjoy idyllic life?
It is easy to get lost in the fast-paced life of modern society, we may wish to look back at the primitive way of life of human ancestors, and trace the good foundations that helped human beings improve themselves and establish a civilized and orderly society, and this is the "world before yesterday".
Combined with his experience of long-term contact with the traditional society of New Guinea, Diamond observes and records the living environment, living customs, and ways of doing things of people in the traditional society, analyzes the historical evolution and future trend of human society, and guides us to find a new pulse of modern civilization in the traditional society.
Upheaval: A Turning Point in Human Society and National Crisis
This is a huge production at the right time. At a time when individuals and countries are full of confusion about the future and crises are coming, Diamond once again returns to history and tries to answer the important proposition of crisis response, which is related to the future of mankind.
In this book, the framework of individual crisis response is used as the starting point to reconstruct the historical narrative threads of the integration of the natural state and the civilized order, and tour the crisis response history of 7 case countries.
From the humble perspective of a social observer, he gives "12 steps to crisis response" from the perspective of sociology, psychology, political science, economics, evolutionary biology and other multidisciplinary perspectives. Crises and upheavals always go hand in hand, and Diamond's crisis response may help restore humanity's sense of crisis.
What makes modern society?
What could the future look like?
Diamond's works were published between 1991 and 2019, and each book was written in the years leading up to publication.
This may leave you wondering: Are these books outdated? Knowledge has been replaced, are these books now out of date and of value?
Diamond wrote this in Guns, Germs and Steel:
"I hope to convince readers that history is definitely not just one fact after another. There are indeed universal patterns in human history, and explaining those patterns not only produces insight, but is also a fascinating undertaking. ”
Diamond tried to study the history of human society as a science, and in the process of tracing history, he showed the important influencing factors as analytically as possible, so that we could more clearly understand what made modern society and what might shape the future.
So, these books not only prompt us to understand the ancient world, but also help us gain insight into the modern world.
Today, COVID-19 is affecting the world, hampering normal social relations, halting most international travel, and wreaking havoc on the economy and trade.
As Diamond put it: "For the first time in history, the whole world has been forced to admit that we face a common threat that no country can overcome on its own." ”
In the face of this sharply erupting crisis, what will the future of the world look like?
When you open these books, you may not be able to find direct answers, but the ideas in the books are always read and often updated.
Only by understanding how the past was formed can we have the opportunity to find ways to deal with the future.
#今日份互动 #
Which of Diamond's works would you most like to read? What questions are you most curious about about human history?
Welcome to share with Ah Xin in the message area ~ Ah Xin will randomly select 2 lucky geese and send a copy of "Guns, Germs and Steel".
Comprehensive addition and revision of translations
The author specializes in the publication preface of the "To My Chinese Readers" Chinese
An explanatory booklet read by 15 experts is included