I've heard a lot about the book: once from my literature of Africa and the Caribbean professor, and once from my Animal Diversity Professor. I'm going to have to check this one out...
did they make the book into a documentary? i read his other book "the third chimpanzee" which was one of the most interesting books ive ever read, bought guns, germs and steel a while back but havnt read it yet.
i'd seriously rate "the third chimpanzee" up there with carl sagans "cosmos" or dawkins "blind watchmaker", everyone should read it.
Read the book saw the documentary as well. Diamond's thinking and observations are brilliant. The book addresses the question, how and why did Indo European civilization become the dominant civilization in the world. The thrust being that first local abundance and geography of early agriculture translated into advantage. Agricultural abundance translating into cultural abundance. The domestication of animals over time introduced diseases to those localized populations, so that they developed a level of immunity from those diseases. Further their greater abundance of food led to more time to develop specialization, such as metallurgy. As these local successes began to spread out onto the landscape they introduced these diseases all at once to the populations they came in contact with, thereby causing epidemic disease that decimated that population. And they came with metal weapons and tools, which were superior to the stone implements in common use before.
My teacher made my grade 11 Issues in Human Growth and Development class read this book. I thought it was really interesting. I bought it two years ago but I've yet to get around to reading it again.
