On Mon, 19 Jun 2000, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> For some reason, American buffalo are are unsuitable for
> domestication.
Nonsense. They're domesticated now. And if they had been domesticated over millenia, they would have changed their physical characteristics to make it easier.
> The main point Diamond is making is that when you start in a
> relatively isolated and resource-poor environment, your civilisation
> will not get very far (that is, btw, the main lesson of the
> "Civilisation" computer game). However, in the Americas this argument
> takes a different twists, because the arrival of the stone age hunters
> coincides with the extintion of large mammals, which in all likelihood
> were hunted to extinction. Hence the line that an initial
> technological success (efficient hunting weapons and organization
> necessary to hunt big game) may later on turn into a relative
> disadvantage. That's dialectics, pure and simple.
So simple it seems to be made up. Bison certainly weren't hunted to extinction. Nowhere near it. Megafauna were -- but equally so in Europe. At first glance the opposite seems to be true: there was more easy game left in the North America than in Europe at the end of the Stone Age.
> The argument was put forth by Jared Diamond in his book _Guns, Germs
> and Steel_ and I must admit his environmental explanation of
> 'civilisational' differences go a very log way. Unlike conventional
> environmentalist who try to explain civilizational advances by
> environmental influences, Diamon explains the ABSENCE of certain
> advantages by unfavourable environmental influences, such as the
> absense of suitable species or geographic isolation.
I dunno Wojtek. Explaining why North Americans didn't domesticate buffalo by saying they are undomesticatable seems both circular and untrue.
Saying that Europeans had a different mix of animals and plants available for domestication is certainly true. That that different mix might have been more conducive to the development of agriculture might be true too. Might be, could be, maybe.
It could also be that North Americans harvested food from wild buffalo herds and other forms of hunting and nomadism more efficiently that Europeans got it through domestication. That would still allow you to say that success sometimes stands in the way of progress. But culture wouldn't vanish the way you'd like.
>From the evidence, I see nothing to choose between these two positions.
Do you have something more?
BTW, this argument isn't original with Diamond. It was laid out by Marvin Harris in _Cannibals and Kings_ in 1977. I was attracted to it when I first read it myself. But he didn't have a good answer to the bison question either.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com