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/lit/ - Literature

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File: 1.03 MB, 690x1000, Guns, Germs, and Steel.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
22581605 No.22581605 [Reply] [Original]

What does /lit/ think of Guns, Germs, and Steel? I was going to pick it up because people said it was a good introduction to anthropology, but then I saw a reddit thread of historians/anthropologists completely lambasting it. Just wanted to get a balanced opinion.

>> No.22581609

>>22581605
read Why Nations Fail. It has its own problems but is overall a pretty good book, but the entertaining part is that it spends quite a bit of time and effort methodically demolishing GG&S

>> No.22581838

>>22581605

It's a good book.

The only people seething about this book are racists who want to believe that they are special (because they have nothing to be proud of besides the color of their skin).

>> No.22581849

>>22581838
>wahhhh it’s the racists
Kindly explain how China, Japan, the entirety of the Middle East, South and Middle Americans, and even the Inuits all thrived as cultures while Africans contributed fuck all to civilization?

>> No.22581871

>>22581849

Maybe you should read the book?

>> No.22581877

>>22581605
Its not held in any great esteem by Anthropology as a field. It also has been debunked by the recent advances in genetics in the last decade or more.

>> No.22581893
File: 443 KB, 662x5691, guns germs and steel.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
22581893

>> No.22581908

>>22581838
Race isn‘t skin color, try again.

>> No.22581926

>>22581605
Wait, so some countries just got lucky?

>> No.22582034

It's just a bit strange to completely disregard the rather straightforward assumption that environments might cause some differences in behavioural and cognitive traits, in addition to the obvious differences in physical traits we all know and accept, isn't it?
>yes we can make a breed of dog significantly smarter in a hundred years but there's no way anything like this could happen to humans naturally over hundreds of thousands of years, no way

>> No.22582038
File: 57 KB, 463x412, 1914-german-east-africa-1.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
22582038

>>22581605
jewish dogshit

>> No.22582042
File: 1.45 MB, 534x338, its-alll-so-tiresome-tired.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
22582042

>>22581838
>color of their skin

>> No.22582053

>>22581609
>demolishing GG&S

This book doesn't even purport to cover history before the year 1500, which is the period that GG&S deals with.

>>22581877
Nonsense. You are conflating it with the "environmental determinism" of antiquity that was used to justify colonialism.


>>22581926
>some countries

Countries are where they are. People can be either lucky to be in the right place or they could have put themselves in the right place through war/migration.