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History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves

Jared Diamond

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Jared Diamond
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: September 10
Biologist
Ecologist
Geographer
Ornithologist
Physiologist
Scientist
University Teacher
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Jared Mason Diamond
Jared M. Diamond
Environment
Differences
Courses
Environments
History
Biological
Different
Peoples
Followed
Evolution
Among

More quotes by Jared Diamond

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It invites a search for ultimate causes: why were Europeans, rather than Africans or Native Americans, the ones to end up with guns, the nastiest germs, and steel?
Jared Diamond
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We study the injustices of history for the same reason that we study genocide, and for the same reason that psychologists study the minds of murderers and rapists... to understand how those evil things came about.
Jared Diamond
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Why were there far more species of domesticated animals in Eurasia than in the Americas? The Americas harbor over a thousand native wild mammal species, so you might initially suppose that the Americas offered plenty of starting material for domestication.
Jared Diamond
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African cavalry mounted on rhinos or hippos would have made mincemeat of European cavalry mounted on horses. But it couldnt happen.
Jared Diamond
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With the rise of chiefdoms around 7,500 years ago, people had to learn, for the first time in history, how to encounter strangers regularly without attempting to kill them.
Jared Diamond
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Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.
Jared Diamond
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[T]he values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs.
Jared Diamond
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To dismiss the current extinction wave on the grounds that extinctions are normal events is like ignoring a genocidal massacre on the grounds that every human is bound to die at some time anyway.
Jared Diamond
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Introspection and preserved writings give us far more insight into the ways of past humans than we have into the ways of past dinosaurs. For that reason, I'm optimistic that we can eventually arrive at convincing explanations for these broadest patterns of human history.
Jared Diamond
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All human societies go through fads in which they temporarily either adopt practices of little use or else abandon practices of considerable use.
Jared Diamond
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Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?
Jared Diamond
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Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial in tipping the outcomes [of the various societies' histories] towards success or failure: long-term planning and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives.
Jared Diamond
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Today Charles Darwin is best known for establishing the fact of evolution and for recognizing the major role of natural selection in driving it.
Jared Diamond
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The adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered.
Jared Diamond
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Not until the beginning of the 20th century did Europe's urban populations finally become self-sustaining: before then, constant immigration of healthy peasants from the countryside was necessary to make up for the constant deaths of city dwellers from crowd diseases.
Jared Diamond
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Measles and TB evolved from diseases of our cattle, influenza from a disease of pigs, and smallpox possibly from a disease of camels. The Americas had very few native domesticated animal species from which humans could acquire such diseases.
Jared Diamond
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One person making a wrong decision affects the whole country.
Jared Diamond
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I personally am not conscious of my accent.
Jared Diamond
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Starbucks goes to a great effort, and pays twice as much for its coffee as its competitors do, and is very careful to help coffee producers in developing countries grow coffee without pesticides and in ways that preserve forest structure.
Jared Diamond
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Biology is the science. Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique.
Jared Diamond