Spenser

Guns, Germs and Steel!

Jared Diamond's book is a fairly good history of man starting from around 15,000 years ago till present. It documents the rise and fall of many ancient civilizations, the birth and spread of (Or Evolution Of) their languages, food, domesticatable animals, germs, technologies and ideologies to all parts of the world. From the Fertile Crescent to east Asia, native Americas, Australia and the Polynesian islands, the spread of humanity across the globe is well understood and supported by huge amounts of fossil evidence. Many of these societies predate the bible and none of them seem to suggest anything about knowing of some global flood. They all managed to live through it.

The beginnings of food production root back 15,000 years. The Bible says the world is 6000 years ( up to 10,000 estimated by some) old. Guns, Germs and Steel is a book based on scientific observation and deduction while the Bible was written by an ancient mythological cult that was in political upheaval in its early years in order to gain control of Christianity as a whole, then vote which Gospels should be kept and which should be abandoned. Both books were written by men. Only one can be correct in it asserted time table.

I'll give you a hint, it starts with a "G" and ends with a "uns, Germs and Steel."

:notworthy :notworthy :notworthy :notworthy :notworthy

Mageth

I've got that book. I guess I need to read it sometimes (referring, of course, to Guns, Germs and Steel).

Zimyatin

I'm reading that book right now and I think it's great. As I read the book it makes me wonder how anyone could believe the absolute rubbish that is fundamental christanity.

Guns, Germs, and Steel shows the interplay between anthropology, history, geography, sociology, etc., that shaped our modern world. The underlying purpose of the book is to explain why Europe and Europeans came to dominate the planet while others were easily subdued. It does away with racist or religious claims of superority. If things had turned out differently, perhaps the Aztecs might have conquered Europe and these boards would be filled with fundies preaching the need for human sacrifice.

I highly recommend this book.

pz

What were we thinking? It's not in the E/C FAQ and booklist...and it should be.

Roland98

Ooh, good call. Read it about a year ago and thought it was excellent (as a microbiologist, though, I was looking for a bit more "germs"...can't please everyone, I guess.)

Spenser

I was hoping to get some sort of debate out of this, some one like Magus telling me this book is completely fallible even thought she hasn't read it...

DAMN!

Craig

I'm about 100 pages into it right now and really have nothing but great things to say about it so far.

Doubting Didymus

Good point. Weren't we planning on adding whole extra sections to that list?

By the way, do you know how hard it was for me to find that damn book? It wasn't in any shop in the whole country. I eventually had to have it shipped to me.

Nowadays, of course, its friggin' everywhere. (I'm told it won some sort of award...)

RufusAtticus

Shshshshsh, don't remind them or we will actually have to do that some day.

Vorkosigan

A good companion to this is Africa: A Biography of a Continent by John Reade. It works with many of the same themes as Diamond, and has some great info on colonialism and tribalism.