/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4341010]

/lit/, I want to learn about our world, humanity, and history.
I want to start reading literature about our beginnings, our history on all of the continents, to understand why did we become what we are now, what were the biggest impacts on our history, what shaped us.
Im interested in pretty much everything, from nutrition to art, religions, politics, discoveries, wars.
Currently I'm halfway through Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel", and I love it.
do you have any suggestions? ill take anything
Also, really interested if there is a book trying to explain how exactly religions spawned? Islam's story looks closest to reality, they explain pretty well who was Muhammed, how did he popularize the religion, how did he gain the followers and so on. Paganism is explainable too. Anything on Christianity?

thank you /lit/

[Anonymous No.4341014]

The Quran

[Anonymous No.4341143]

>>4341014
Quran is on my list, but I want to read it when I approximately reach the times it is allegedly written on,

[Anonymous No.4341184]

Part of the problem is that Mohammad and Buddha gained wide acceptance within their lifetimes and had ample time to organize their teachings and make arrangements for their successors.

Jesus was executed as a common criminal aged about 33, and his teachings were repressed. It took three centuries to gain acceptance, by which time there were three major interpretations of the nature of Jesus Christ and his work and three major churches fighting for dominance.

The Trinitarian's in Greece were backed by the Roman Empire, so of course they won and gave us the concept of a divine Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each distinct but of one essence , but the Monophysites in Egypt could have easily won, and passed on their concept of a Jesus Christ who was both God and a mortal man, but each distinct from the other, or the Miaphysites in Syria who also said that Christ was God and mortal, but both in one person.

Part of the reason Christianity seems so schizophrenic is because the formative years of the church were spent in a three century long fight over technicalities instead of following and clarifying the teachings of Jesus Christ.

[Anonymous No.4341295]

>>4341184
is there any scientific work on this

[Anonymous No.4341301]

>Guns, Germs, and Steel
LOL
>In fact, an evolutionary argument could be made that “primitive” people in New Guinea must be more intelligent, on average, than “civilized” Western Europeans or Americans. Europeans live in densely populated societies where death not caused by old age most commonly comes from disease, not murder or war. In New Guinea, death is most commonly from murder, warfare, accident, or lack of food, events which are less likely to happen to a more intelligent person. Hence, one could argue that New Guineans are likely to be more intelligent by natural selection.
Did you get past the first ten pages yet or are you just really dense?

[Anonymous No.4341356]

a few suggestions on general history books that i've read

understanding the genesis of christianity in the jewish communities of the greater greek/roman mediterranean: the jews in the greek age by bickermann

islams origins and rise to power as the dominant religion in the middle east and n africa: the rise of islam by gordon

the inquisition and rise of a "catholic" nation: dogs of god by reston

nativist religion in the new world: facing east from indiant country by richter

[Anonymous No.4341429]

Not a book but it might what youre looking for
Just search for a 'A Brief History of Humankind' on the Coursera

[Anonymous No.4341437]

>>4341010
>Currently I'm halfway through Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel", and I love it.
I feel sorry for you.

[Anonymous No.4341490]

>>4341437
When will our mods start banning this /pol/ cancer

[Anonymous No.4341493]

>>4341490
Clearly, anyone who thinks Guns, Germs, etc. is a poorly researched and written book must be from /pol/. It's the only explanation.

[Anonymous No.4341499]

>>4341490
http://www.livinganthropologically.com/anthropology/guns-germs-and-steel/

Academics doesn't really like him as well, should we ban them also?

Life isn't just left or right.

[Anonymous No.4341501]

>>4341490
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/books/2013/02/jared_diamond_the_world_until_yesterday_anthropologists_are_wary_of_lack.html

[Anonymous No.4341506]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/01/14/169374400/why-does-jared-diamond-make-anthropologists-so-mad

[Anonymous No.4341517]

>>4341499
>http://www.livinganthropologically.com/anthropology/guns-germs-and-steel/
>1 academic at an obscure undergraduate college writes a blog
>"Academics doesn't like him"
shiggy daddit

[Anonymous No.4341521]

>>4341493
More or less, yes. Only /pol/ would have a problem with that "liberal propaganda".

[Anonymous No.4341530]

>>4341521
I don't think it's propaganda, and I don't think Diamond has an agenda. I just think the book and his conclusions lack academic merit.

[Anonymous No.4341712]

I just finished reading this the other day and thought it was a pretty good introduction to history. Not exactly academic or anything, but well researched. Only real complaint is it feels dumbed down at times and doesn't branch off from the major civilizations very much. I would call it more of a history of the Mediterranean/middle eastern civilizations (plus india and china) than of the world.

Still good though.

[Anonymous No.4341716]

The Discoverers
The Creators
The Seekers

[Anonymous No.4341764]

>>4341521
everything after WW2 is propaganda kid
you dont have to be a genious to see that there is a liberal agenda(amongst dozens if not hundreds of other agendas)
we live in a constant state of ideological warfare, it is a hopeless hegelian groundhog day

[Anonymous No.4341767]

>>4341506
anthropologists hate him!
a brave autor demolishes the cis western patriarchal lies in his own kitchen
gib money pls

[Anonymous No.4341796]

This is pretty good for a general overview.

[Anonymous No.4341823]

From Dawn to Dacadence: 500 years of western culture
Amaizing book

[Anonymous No.4341847]

"A History of the World in Our Time" Carol Quigley

[Anonymous No.4341944]

>>4341490
>>4341493

I'm really starting to think this is /pol/ . I rarely see this level of cognitive dissonance on any other board and have trouble believing that anyone who reads great books can think this way.

[Anonymous No.4341969]

Two volumes, but best book(s) I've read that encompass all of human history so far. 14 authors writing chapters in their area of expertise. Expensive, but maybe theres an electronic copy floating around somewhere or you can ask for it at your library. My only major issue is it can be dry, since it's in the style of a textbook.

http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?id=4294977952

[Anonymous No.4341992]

Michael Hart - Understanding Human History

The author is an astrophysicist who basically took up world history as a hobby of his and developed it into an actual career for himself.

This book is wonderful. He does a wonderful job of being as unbiased as possible and stating the entire known human history since the dawn of our civilization, going in depth about the power of empires and generals, the importance of human sexuality to our survival and he, very controversially, emphasizes racial differences within our species. At the end of the book, he looks at very precise statistics and makes a prediction as to the future of our species in relation to races.

I highly recommend it. You can read the entire thing here.

http://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/hart_-_understanding_human_history-1.pdf

[Anonymous No.4342000]

>>4341301
What's the problem with that quote, anon? Doesn't seem impossible to me, although a lot will depend on how you define intelligence and what aspects of it you're measuring. Also not sure how you'd separate 'natural selection' from, for example, a cultural emphasis on self-sufficiency which would mean you'd have to be good at thinking on your feet. But what's inherently absurd about the notion?

[Anonymous No.4342013]

As an introduction to history, does anyone else like A Cartoon History of the Universe? I wish I'd read more than just the first compilation when I was a kid- the stuff in there really stuck in my head, probably more than anything else.

[Anonymous No.4342035]

>guns germs steel

LOL

[Anonymous No.4342037]

/lit/ is literally braindead liberal.jewish wannabe intellectuals masturbating to the same fallacious texts repeatedly.

[Anonymous No.4342044]

>>4342035
>No significant cultural exchanges took place between Central Asia and China until the 15th century
Wat.

[Anonymous No.4342054]

>>4342037
>using a post which criticises grand theories, simplistic understandings of other cultures, and choosing facts to fit theories
>while attacking 'liberal Jewish intellectuals'
Heh. Oh, /pol/, you do brighten this place up.

[Anonymous No.4342065]

>>4342035
>Sub-Sahara Africa lies as close to the fertile crescent, regarded as the cradle of civilization, as western Europe and far close than China

There's more than one cradle of civilization. China had one in the Yellow River valley.

[Anonymous No.4342069]

>>4342035
>The South Americans domesticated the llama

Ah yes, the llama, that great beast of burden.

[Anonymous No.4342079]

>>4342037
>using the words "liberal", "braindead"/"brainwashed", "jewish" as name-calling in an argument and expecting to be taken seriously

[Anonymous No.4342094]

>>4342079

[Anonymous No.4342133]

>>4342065
Also, between the fertile crescent and sub-Saharan Africa, there is, you know, the fucking Sahara. If I'm not wholly mistaken, that was Diamond's point.

[Anonymous No.4342134]

>>4342094
more buzzwords, keep at it
what's next, sheeple?

[Anonymous No.4342142]

>>4342035

LMAO who wrote this? How can anyone be this dumb. It's like they never read the book all the way through AND never ever watched the history channel or real an encyclopedia at the same time.

[Anonymous No.4342282]

OP, this is all you need.

[Anonymous No.4342294]

>>4342282
> History can be summed up as a single meta narrative
/pol/ please

[Anonymous No.4342315]

>>4342294
Well all the things OP mentioned plus more are extensively written about in The Decline. You don't have to agree with it but it is definitely a radically different perspective on history if you've never been acquainted with perennialist authors before.

>/pol/

Are we really doing this again?

[Anonymous No.4342321]

>>4342294
>a book that deduced a copernican model of history which has proven true time after time is wrong
>muh pseudoscience egalitarianist idralism book is right

[Anonymous No.4342333]

>>4342321
>a book dealing with spans of time over thousands of years
>written less than a century ago
>has proven true time after time
Huh?

[Anonymous No.4342339]

>>4342333
Spenglers predictions about the west have come true.

[Anonymous No.4342354]

>>4342339
Even though I like the book, it's not the bible. You cant see history through a looking glass of 80 some years.

Lets heed the warnings of the book, hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

[Anonymous No.4342365]

>>4342354
Its not the Bible, but it gives us a prism through which we can look at history through, which gives us insights about things we would have never noticed. For example, he focused a lot on the west and its ideas of Progress, the idea of human history being a universal straight line beginning with primitive barbarism and ending with cosmopolitan utopia on earth. In reality, cultures grow and decay over time, and the cult of sciences are actually the proof.

[Anonymous No.4342391]

>>4342339
Interesting. What did he predict that wasn't already happening when he was writing, and how precisely did he predict it?

[Anonymous No.4342403]

Hey, OP, just as warmup listen to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast.

He opened my eyes alot to the dissemination of sort of, "what is" history.

[Anonymous No.4342406]

>>4342000
we dont evolve that fast

[Anonymous No.4342432]

>>4342000

The problem with that quote is THE problem with history. Historians would rather be racist or derogatory or entirely inventive when looking at various groups of people. This is utter retardation.

There are myriad cultural, economic, technological, and natural events that actually shape societies, not arbitrary meaning attributed to specific groups.

Nonsense like that is how you get genocide.

[Anonymous No.4342439]

>>4342035
The outright rejection of what disease did to native american populations is ridiculous in ways I cannot fathom.

[Anonymous No.4342441]

Read Why Nations Fail OP.

[Anonymous No.4342451]

>>4342432
Huh? Diamond's whole point there is to refute the idea that different average intelligence makes a difference. He's saying New Guineans could be on average more intelligent, but that wouldn't determine their history.

Granted, IIRC he goes on to come up with his own reductive (heavily environmentally determinist) scheme to explain how history works, but he doesn't do it in that quote.

Also, he's not a historian. I'm pretty sure historians don't like him because they are, as a rule, extremely wary of grand theories- they are far too engaged with the human details and accidents that mess up those theories. Also professionally speaking he's treading on their turf, which is never popular.

[Anonymous No.4342480]

/pol/ invasion or not Diamond isn't taken seriously outside of political circles since it's not his actual field of study and he's pushing environmental determinism (a long outdated argument), is factually wrong on many points and manages to be internally inconsistent in his arguments between pages as well.

[Anonymous No.4342481]

>>4342451
as a historian, i can offer one confirmation of your suspicion. im averse to the whole genre/idea of 'global history since humanity appeared on earth until the present'

the best history books ive read tend to, at most, chew 100 years in a given region, or for a particular topic.

[Anonymous No.4342503]

>>4342481
Yeah, I don't think very long-term histories have been academically credible since the days of 'scientific history'. Mind you, seems like everything is transational or global these days- covering a short period, but huge geographical areas.

[Anonymous No.4342506]

>>4342480
>he's pushing environmental determinism (a long outdated argument), is factually wrong on many points and manages to be internally inconsistent in his arguments between pages as well.
Anons on 4hen says this every fucking day but never exactly gives reasons.

[Anonymous No.4342526]

>>4341429
Actually, that whole course is based on the book Eine kurze Geschichte der Menschheit, which will be translated into English next year. I've followed a bit of this course and I found it very interesting, but the professor's accent is unbearable and I prefer reading anyway, so I'm going to wait for the translation to come out.

[Anonymous No.4342530]

>>4342526
Oh, btw, if you do want to follow the course, quickly download all the videos right now because they're taking everything down in a few days.

[Anonymous No.4342542]

>>4342506
They do when they point out that he's engaging in environmental determinism, his arguments about technological ascendancy or even his New Guinean account (compared to his earlier complaints about racism). I wonder how many /lit/ fans understand that it's basically biological reductionism?

In any case if anyone wants to read good (but still flawed) environmental determinism by someone who doesn't cherrypick his arguments and doesn't chalk half of history up to "tech" to make his point there's Alfred Crosby's Ecological Imperialism.

[Anonymous No.4342566]

>>4342542
>Alfred Crosby's Ecological Imperialism

I've recently read this, do you know of any other books that goes in this direction that is not Guns, Germs and Steel? (Interplay of ecological and human factors in history)

[Anonymous No.4342597]

>>4342566
There are a couple but they're generally very academic like "Climatic Effects on Individual, Social, and Economic Behavior: A Physioeconomic Review of Research Across Disciplines" by Philip M. Parker or they're from around 1930 and don't skimp about their views on biological race.

[Anonymous No.4342603]

>>4342566
Mark Elvin's Retreat of the Elephants (about China), maybe?

[Anonymous No.4342630]

The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of World History by McNeills, they have some other books from the area as well.
Not completely sure about how unbiased the content is, read it years ago.

[Anonymous No.4342648]

>>4342597
>>4342603
Thanks
>Mark Elvin's Retreat of the Elephants
Ha, that's exactly what I was searching for, thank you!

[Anonymous No.4342656]

Diamond does not give his readers the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In fact, he gives them much less. Inexcusably for an evolutionary biologist, Diamond fails to inform his readers that it is different environments that cause, via natural selection, biological differences among populations. All of the Eurasian developments he described created positive feedback loops selecting for increased intelligence and various personality traits (e.g., altruism, rule-following, etc.).

Racial differences in brain size and IQ map very closely to the same cultural histories Diamond explains. Although Diamond dismisses such research as "loathsome", he fails to tell his readers what, if anything, might be scientifically wrong with any of it.

[Anonymous No.4342662]

>>4342656
Discoveries using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), which creates a three-dimensional image of the living brain, have shown a strong positive correlation (.44) between brain size and IQ (see Rushton & Ankney, 1996, for a review). And there is more. The National Collaborative Perinatal Project on 53,000 children by Sarah Broman and her colleagues, showed that head perimeter at birth significantly predicts head perimeter at 7 years — and head perimeter at seven years predicts IQ. It also shows that Asian children average a larger head perimeter at birth than do White children who average a larger head perimeter than do Black children.

Racial differences in brain size have been established using a variety of modern methods. Using endocranial volume, for example, Beals et al. (1984, p. 307, Table 5) analyzed about 20,000 skulls from around the world. East Asians averaged 1,415 cm3 , Europeans averaged 1,362 cm3, and Africans averaged 1,268 cm3 . Using external head measures to calculate cranial capacities, Rushton (1992) analyzed a stratified random sample of 6,325 U.S. Army personnel measured in 1988 for fitting helmets and found that Asian Americans averaged 1,416 cm3, European Americans 1,380 cm3, and African Americans 1,359 cm3. Finally, a recent MRI study found that people of African and Caribbean background averaged a smaller brain volume than did those of European background (again see Rushton & Ankney, 1996, for review).

[Anonymous No.4342665]

>>4342662
As discussed in Herrnstein and Murray’s (1994) The Bell Curve, and Rushton’s (1995) Race, Evolution, and Behavior, the heritability of intelligence is now well established from numerous adoption, twin, and family studies. Particularly noteworthy are the genetic contributions of around 80% found in adult twins reared apart. And most transracial adoption studies provide evidence for the heritability of racial differences in IQ. For instance, Korean and Vietnamese children adopted into white American and white Belgian homes were examined in studies by E.A. Clark and J. Hanisee, by M. Frydman and R. Lynn, and by M. Winick et al. Many had been hospitalized for malnutrition. But they went on to develop IQs ten or more points higher than their adoptive national norms. By contrast, the famous Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study marked black/white differences emerged by age 17 even though the black children had been reared in white middle-class families (Weinberg, Scarr & Waldman, 1992).

[Anonymous No.4342668]

>>4342648
Wikipedia actually has a big list of books under 'Environmental History' as well.

[Anonymous No.4342677]

>>4342656
>>4342662
>>4342665
>>>/sci/
Also
>Diamond fails to inform his readers that it is different environments that cause, via natural selection, biological differences among populations
No he doesn't. There's a quote right here which explicitly allows for that, even to the exent of affecting average intelligence: >>4341301

[Anonymous No.4342682]

>>4342662
>Racial differences in brain size have been established using a variety of modern methods
But apparently not modern enough to subdivide people into more precise categories than 'European', 'East Asian', and 'African'...

[Anonymous No.4342683]

>>4342656
>a book written by humans

The phrasing of this is disturbing. It implies there are books not written by humans.

Like. I seriously hope there aren't people out there who believe the Bible wasn't written by humans ("just as fucking misguided as they are!")

[Anonymous No.4342690]

>>4342683
>not reading books written by the other great apes
It's like you hate fun or something. Orang-utans have produced some outstanding detective novels.

[Anonymous No.4342694]

>>4342683
That's the original.

Pic related.

[Anonymous No.4342713]

>>4342682
The topology of human trees (Figs. 4, 5) is remarkably consistent regardless of which class of loci are considered, and principal component analysis of genetic data also produces predictable clustering (Fig. 6). Either method gives a good visual overview of the general relatedness of the world’s populations.

By analysis of classical markers, Nei & Roychoudhury (1993) identified five major human clades: sub-Saharan Africans, Caucasians, Greater Asians, Australopapuans and Amerindians. Evolutionary trees constructed with autosomal RFLPs,[105] microsatellites[106] and Alu insertions[107] show similar topology. Frequently, Amerindians are grouped together with Asians, indicating four major clades, and it has been suggested that this should be a minimum.[108] Obviously, additional structure exists within each of these groups, but as we’ve seen, it’s generally weak compared to the differentiation among the ones listed here. For this reason alone, the term ‘race’ applies well to these major groupings.

[Anonymous No.4342738]

>>4342713
What's the scale of this chart, anon? Is the vertical distance between horizontal lines supposed to be the genetic distance between the populations?

[Anonymous No.4342769]

>>4342662
The African American and European isn't that different though.

[Anonymous No.4342784]

>>4342662
The African American and European aren't that different though.

[Anonymous No.4342793]

>>4342713
So when a Finn and a Tibetan produce offspring they produce a new race?
So Celts are... English? Italian? Iranian?
Why does this list claim Japanese and Tibetans are more closely related than Japanese and Koreans, when Old Japanese is very possibly descended from Middle (or Old?) Korean, but Tibetan is a from a different language family altogether?

[Anonymous No.4342801]

>>4342793

>linguistic connection depending upon ethnicity

you're retarded

[Anonymous No.4342837]

>>4342801
So modern Tibetans are Koreans that migrated into Tibet and a) developed a new language in the Tibeto-Burman family, b) fused their Old Korean (proto-Korean?) language with a local language to produce Tibetan, c) abandoned their language, adopted the native, and eventually brought up Tibetan? Obviously all of these are dependent on timelines, which I'm not too familiar with. Your list is claiming Japanese and Tibetans are direct descendents of Koreans, and I hate to break this to you but I don't know of claims by linguists that Tibetan has a history related to Korean or that Tibetans have, as you insist, genetic or ethnic relation.

[Anonymous No.4342844]

>>4342801
>>4342837
I'd also like a response to my other questions.

[Anonymous No.4342861]

>>4342837
Not that anon, but you seem to be massively misreading the chart. It shows amount of genetic difference between populations, not who is descended from who (if it did, one of the African populations would be the starting-point).

[Anonymous No.4342885]

>>4342861
>It shows amount of genetic difference between populations
So, continuing with Korean/Japanese/Tibetan, it's saying that Japanese and Tibetans are similar genetically, and Koreans share similarities with both?

[Anonymous No.4342957]

>>4342403
so based
if you like history you will love the Carlin

also, when you are ready for the next level of history podcast, check out Joseph Hogarty's Europe From It's Origins. While Carlin is, as he puts it, "a fan of history" rather than a historian, Hogarty is the real deal. He presents a lot of dense information in an academic way, uses a lot of Latin, Greek, and French, and directly and convincingly challenges notions laymen and historians consider gospel.

for a good book about the "big picture" of human history, from a political perspective, try Francis Fukuyama's Origins of Political Order. good stuff, and he presents a more idea-oriented theory than Diamond about why the west, particularly Britain, "worked" compared to the rest of the world.

[Anonymous No.4342959]

>>4341010
Reading something not corrupted by political correctness.

[Anonymous No.4342984]

>>4342793
>So when a Finn and a Tibetan produce offspring they produce a new race?
What gives you that idea?

They produce a mixed race mongrel.

[Anonymous No.4342988]

>>4342885
Here's the detailed table.

>tfw googling and posting the kind of stuff /pol/ usually posts

...although actually I'm not sure what /pol/ would think of this. As far as I can see it shows the amount of difference within each population to be much greater than the average difference between populations.

[Anonymous No.4342989]

>>4342984
What's the point of that pic? That you can use allegories to deliver points that really don't make sense such as "race and color as concepts are interchangeable"?

[Anonymous No.4342995]

>>4342988
>As far as I can see it shows the amount of difference within each population to be much greater than the average difference between populations.
A.K.A. Lewontin's fallacy.

[Anonymous No.4343001]

>>4342989
It's mocking the PC liberal belief that race is a social construct.

[Anonymous No.4343004]

>>4342995
I'm just saying what I see on the chart, anon. I could be wrong here, but how else do you interpret the much bigger numbers on the diagonals? Apparently the distance between 'English' and 'English' is 34.9, compared to, say, 13.3 between 'English' and 'Pygmy'.

[Anonymous No.4343023]

>>4343004
Q: Isn’t there actually more genetic distance between populations within the traditional human races than between the major races themselves?

>Many data sets have been assembled since 1972 for classical polymorphisms and all other genetic markers, and as a general rule, populations within continents are more closely related to one another than they are to the populations of other continents. This pattern can be seen in any matrix of global genetic distances, such as those assembled by Cavalli-Sforza et al. in The History and Geography of Human Genes.

http://www.amerika.org/conservation/the-race-frequently-asked-questions-f-a-q-by-john-goodrum/

[Anonymous No.4343033]

>>4342995
"The fact that, given enough genetic data, individuals can be correctly assigned to their populations of origin is compatible with the observation that most human genetic variation is found within populations, not between them. It is also compatible with our finding that, even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population. Thus, caution should be used when using geographic or genetic ancestry to make inferences about individual phenotypes... A final complication arises when racial classifications are used as proxies for geographic ancestry. Although many concepts of race are correlated with geographic ancestry, the two are not interchangeable, and relying on racial classifications will reduce predictive power still further."

Witherspoon et al. (2007), "Genetic Similarities Within and Between Human Populations"

[Anonymous No.4343035]

>>4343023
I'm just saying what I see on the chart, anon. I could be wrong here, but how else do you interpret the much bigger numbers on the diagonals? Apparently the distance between 'English' and 'English' is 34.9, compared to, say, 13.3 between 'English' and 'Pygmy'.

You cited this data. Now explain it.

[Anonymous No.4343040]

>>4343033
“The hierarchical AMOVA analysis shows that, with the exception of Y STRPs, all systems show much less differentiation between populations within continents than between continents. This result is expected when there is greater gene flow between populations that are in close geographic proximity to one another. The autosomal values…are especially small, ranging from 1.3% for the RSPs to 1.8% for the Alu polymorphisms. This is in agreement with the small continental GST values shown in table 4…they are highly consistent both with one another and with previous analyses of worldwide variation in autosomal microsatellites and RFLPs, which also show considerably greater differentiation between continents than between populations within continents… The fact that there is little differentiation between populations within continents has important implications in the forensic setting, in that it supports the current practice of grouping reference populations into broad ethnic categories when autosomal STRP data are used…”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1288178/

[Anonymous No.4343052]

>>4342988
>>4343004
>>4343035
The diagonal is showing heterozygosity (H) and the numbers below the diagonal are DA distances.

Sorry, I didn't see you were misreading the chart. It says right there on it what the numbers are.

[Anonymous No.4343053]

>>4343033
>"This shows that people's self-identified race/ethnicity is a nearly perfect indicator of their genetic background," Risch said.

http://med.stanford.edu/news_releases/2005/january/racial-data.htm

[Anonymous No.4343059]

>>4343052
I know, I'm asking for what that means. Heterozygosity is essentially genetic difference, no?

[Anonymous No.4343062]

>>4343040
That source also says this:

"A hierarchical analysis of genetic variation (i.e., AMOVA) is presented in table 5. Consistent with the GST results presented in table 4, the results of this analysis show that the great majority of genetic variation occurs within populations."

[Anonymous No.4343066]

Well yeah, people with similar characteristics probably share certain genes. I don't see why this is the basis to conclude that we can meaningfully divide humanity into races.

People with attached and unattached earlobes have genes to code for these traits. No one, however, is dividing humanity into two 'races' of "The Attached-Earlobers" and "The Unattached Earlobers"

[Anonymous No.4343067]

>>4343062
...as seen here. 72-89% of the variation is within populations.

[Anonymous No.4343068]

>>4343062
And?

[Anonymous No.4343075]

>>4343068
I assumed you were disagreeing with >>4343033
>most human genetic variation is found within populations, not between them

[Anonymous No.4343076]

>>4343033
Reading the paper to its conclusion, the major finding is this: the idea that individuals from different (highly) distinct races could be more genetically similar than they would be to members of their own group is an illusion due to insufficient numbers of markers.

When 1000+ markers are used, Europeans, East Asians, and sub-Saharan Africans always are more genetically similar to members of their own group than to those of the other groups; the overlap in genetic similarity between these groups is ~ 0%.

http://majorityrights.com/weblog/comments/genetic_similarities_within_and_between_human_populations/

[Anonymous No.4343077]

>>4343040
"A hierarchical analysis of genetic variation (i.e., AMOVA) is presented in table 5. Consistent with the GST results presented in table 4, the results of this analysis show that the great majority of genetic variation occurs within populations."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1288178/

Yes, that is the exact same source. Thanks for proving my point though!

[Anonymous No.4343079]

>>4343075
I'm disagreeing with people trying to derive Lewontin's fallacy from that.

People from different genetic groups are never more closely related to different races than their own race. Never.

You are apparently trying to suggest otherwise.

[Anonymous No.4343083]

>>4343077
You're misinterpreting what that actually means.

[Anonymous No.4343084]

>>4343076
Please tell me more about how your random blogger has a better interpretation of the results than the scientists working on the paper.

[Anonymous No.4343086]

>>4343083
How should it be interpreted then?

[Anonymous No.4343087]

>>4343084
From the Paper:

"The power of large numbers of common polymorphisms is most apparent in the Microarray data set, comparing the European, East Asian and sub-Saharan African population groups (Figure 2C). ?ˆ approaches zero (median 0.12%) with 1,000 polymorphisms. This implies that, when enough loci are considered, individuals from these population groups will always be genetically most similar to members of their own group"

>when enough loci are considered, individuals from these population groups will always be genetically most similar to members of their own group
>individuals from these population groups will always be genetically most similar to members of their own group
>ALWAYS be genetically most similar to members of their own group

[Anonymous No.4343088]

>>4343053
So what? No one is denying that you can determine the characteristics that people use to determine race from a person's genetic code. The point is that such characteristics represent a very small fraction of genetic variation.

[Anonymous No.4343089]

>>4343079
Nah, I think you're reading Lewontin's fallacy when it's not there. You first did it here: >>4342995. The sentence you quote doesn't say that
>People from different genetic groups are never more closely related to different races than their own race
it just says
>As far as I can see it shows the amount of difference within each population to be much greater than the average difference between populations
which is backed up by >>4343062

[Anonymous No.4343091]

>>4343086
Like this:

>when enough loci are considered, individuals from these population groups will always be genetically most similar to members of their own group

[Anonymous No.4343093]

>>4343088
How is that meaningful? What conclusions do you derive from it?

[Anonymous No.4343095]

>>4343089
...ooops, should have removed the 'never' from your quote like so:
>>People from different genetic groups can be more closely related to different races than their own race

[Anonymous No.4343099]

>>4343091
How on earth could that possibly be an interpretation of
>the great majority of genetic variation occurs within populations
? It's a completely different sentence.

[Anonymous No.4343102]

>>4343084
>Y-YOU C-CAN'T SILENCE THE T-TRUTH, JDIF

[Anonymous No.4343111]

>>4343084
Please tell me more about how you haven't read the scientific paper you are citing.

>"How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?’"
>If genetic similarity is measured over many thousands of loci, the answer becomes ‘‘never’’ when individuals are sampled from geographically separated populations.

http://www.genetics.org/content/176/1/351.full.pdf

[Anonymous No.4343114]

>>4343095
See: >>4343111

>never

[Anonymous No.4343112]

>>4343093
I conclude that grouping populations because of only a few common genes which manifest in easily observed characteristics such as skin colour is as ridiculous as grouping other animals based on such a limited number of genetic factors. It like grouping together a Scottish terrier and a Doberman because they are the same colour and then contrasting them with West Highland Terriers and pitbulls as another group, then trying to claim that Scottish terriers and Doberman both make good attack dogs because they're both black.

[Anonymous No.4343118]

>>4343112
Then your conclusion is stupid and wrong.

>"This shows that people's self-identified race/ethnicity is a nearly perfect indicator of their genetic background," Risch said.

http://med.stanford.edu/news_releases/2005/january/racial-data.htm

[Anonymous No.4343123]

>>4343118
That doesn't answer anon's point at all.

[Anonymous No.4343128]

>>4343123
He didn't have a point to make. He is just parading his own idiocy for all to see.

Racial groupings are extremely accurate and valid.

[Anonymous No.4343131]

>>4343118
What are the major differences between those genetic profiles? Other than those that are linked to outward appearance obviously.

[Anonymous No.4343133]

>>4343111
How does that disprove what I'm saying if only phenotypes influenced by thousands of loci are more likely to be similar within populations than between them?

[Anonymous No.4343139]

>>4343128
>Racial groupings are extremely accurate and valid.
>can't even provide a list of "races," what populations belong to said "races," and define what makes them a

[Anonymous No.4343140]

>>4343131
Intelligence differences are the most significant.

Hormonal differences which cause a gap in violent tendencies also have a large impact on outcomes in modern society.

[Anonymous No.4343141]

>>4343118
"For each person in the study, the researchers examined 326 DNA regions that tend to vary between people. These regions are not necessarily within genes, but are simply genetic signposts on chromosomes that come in a variety of different forms at the same location."

As I said, using a small number of genetic signposts to describe a 'race' is just silly.

[Anonymous No.4343144]

>>4343087
>that image and filename

Oh, hey, it's the OP from the "White Girl Bleeds A Lot" threads! Still race-baiting all over /lit/ I see.

[Anonymous No.4343147]

>>4343133
What are you saying, exactly? You have become incoherent and even linked a scientific paper that seemingly disagrees with you.

[Anonymous No.4343154]

>>4343141
We knew what racial groupings were before the science of genetics even existed. Genetics have confirmed our traditional understanding of race was 100% correct.

I don't even understand what you are trying to argue any more.

[Anonymous No.4343155]

>>4343128
I believe anon's point is that within those racial groupings there's a great deal of diversity and a lot of characteristics that won't be homogenuous across the 'race'- because, as every study linked to so far seems to have said, most genetic variation is within populations.

[Anonymous No.4343158]

>>4343147
You're assuming that an analysis based on a greater number of loci must somehow be better than one based on hundreds of loci (which is the analysis which shows the differences between populations to be less than within populations) when it absolutely isn't. Its like you don't know anything about genetics, you just saw thousands>hundreds so thousands must be better when genetics simply doesn't work that way.

[Anonymous No.4343160]

>>4343155
So?

[Anonymous No.4343165]

>>4343158
What point are you trying to make?

[Anonymous No.4343174]

>>4343154
The genes which create the physical characteristics that people use to define race make up a very small part of the total genetic structure. Grouping people on the tiny amount they have in common while ignoring the vast amount that is dissimilar is ridiculous.

>That green Jaguar is a very fast car
>I have a green Kia
>Ergo my Kia must also be a very fast car because its green too, dpesite the fact that everything else about it is different

[Anonymous No.4343176]

>>4343139
The topology of human trees (Figs. 4, 5) is remarkably consistent regardless of which class of loci are considered, and principal component analysis of genetic data also produces predictable clustering (Fig. 6). Either method gives a good visual overview of the general relatedness of the world’s populations.

By analysis of classical markers, Nei & Roychoudhury (1993) identified five major human clades: sub-Saharan Africans, Caucasians, Greater Asians, Australopapuans and Amerindians. Evolutionary trees constructed with autosomal RFLPs,[105] microsatellites[106] and Alu insertions[107] show similar topology. Frequently, Amerindians are grouped together with Asians, indicating four major clades, and it has been suggested that this should be a minimum.[108] Obviously, additional structure exists within each of these groups, but as we’ve seen, it’s generally weak compared to the differentiation among the ones listed here. For this reason alone, the term ‘race’ applies well to these major groupings.

[Anonymous No.4343177]

>>4343165
That you don't know what the fuck you're talking about and think that 'more loci' means 'better analysis'.

[Anonymous No.4343178]

>>4343160
So it's worth remembering when you start bringing out sweeping attempts to define differences between the 'races' like >>4343140. E.g. just because in a relatively small sample group there are more African-Americans with a low IQ, that doesn't therefore mean that the majority of people of African descent also have a low IQ- it could be a product of diversity within the broader 'African' population.

(obviously I'm assuming just for the sake of argument here that IQ can be directly correlated to genetics)

[Anonymous No.4343183]

>>4343174
If it's "ridiculous" why is it so incredibly accurate? You are spouting inanities.

>"This shows that people's self-identified race/ethnicity is a nearly perfect indicator of their genetic background," Risch said.

http://med.stanford.edu/news_releases/2005/january/racial-data.htm

[Anonymous No.4343193]

>>4343178
The majority of Negroes _do_ have a low IQ.

Their average IQ is a full standard deviation below Whites.

[Anonymous No.4343198]

>>4343193
Sample size, please? And what proportions of which African populations were involved in that survey? How many Nigerians, Bantus, San...?

[Anonymous No.4343203]

>>4343177
I know very well what I am talking about. Race is real. Race is genetic. Our traditional undertanding of race was perfectly valid. This is all confirmed by modern genetic science.

I have no clue what you are talking about. You seem to have been backed into a corner so badly you won't even state what claims you are trying to make, because you know your claims are wrong.

[Anonymous No.4343204]

>>4343183
God, your stupid. I sincerely hope we don't have any genetic similarity.

The test is accurate because they identified the genes that control skin colour and other racial characteristics and surprise, surprise that also matched the race people self identify as. If they looked at a completely different set of genes the analysis wouldn't be accurate because the genes that define race are only a very small part of a person's genetic code and grouping anything together because of tiny similarities is moronic.

[Anonymous No.4343209]

>>4343203
>"You won't state your claim!"
>state claims
>"Ha! I knew it! You can't state your claims! I've got you cornered now! Damage control! Damage control!"

[Anonymous No.4343210]

>>4343204
>they identified the genes that control skin colour and other racial characteristics
No they didn't.

Why are you on /lit/ if you are so incredibly illiterate?

[Anonymous No.4343216]

>>4343140
Where is the evidence of this in the paper you posted? The research into heritability of intelligence is still ongoing, and to this day not a single gene has been found that reliably accounts for the heritability of IQ.

We know that IQ is 50% heritable*, so I'm not disputing that. But with no genetic markers yet discovered, how can you possibly claim that we have proven that such markers exist more prominently in one genetic group than another?

*However heritability percentages are abstract statistical elements and not as simple as saying that half our IQ comes from our parents.

Also, that image has nothing to do with genetics. And it provides no sources, either.

[Anonymous No.4343219]

>>4343216
As discussed in Herrnstein and Murray’s (1994) The Bell Curve, and Rushton’s (1995) Race, Evolution, and Behavior, the heritability of intelligence is now well established from numerous adoption, twin, and family studies. Particularly noteworthy are the genetic contributions of around 80% found in adult twins reared apart. And most transracial adoption studies provide evidence for the heritability of racial differences in IQ. For instance, Korean and Vietnamese children adopted into white American and white Belgian homes were examined in studies by E.A. Clark and J. Hanisee, by M. Frydman and R. Lynn, and by M. Winick et al. Many had been hospitalized for malnutrition. But they went on to develop IQs ten or more points higher than their adoptive national norms. By contrast, the famous Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study marked black/white differences emerged by age 17 even though the black children had been reared in white middle-class families (Weinberg, Scarr & Waldman, 1992).

[Anonymous No.4343223]

>>4343216
Discoveries using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), which creates a three-dimensional image of the living brain, have shown a strong positive correlation (.44) between brain size and IQ (see Rushton & Ankney, 1996, for a review). And there is more. The National Collaborative Perinatal Project on 53,000 children by Sarah Broman and her colleagues, showed that head perimeter at birth significantly predicts head perimeter at 7 years — and head perimeter at seven years predicts IQ. It also shows that Asian children average a larger head perimeter at birth than do White children who average a larger head perimeter than do Black children.

Racial differences in brain size have been established using a variety of modern methods. Using endocranial volume, for example, Beals et al. (1984, p. 307, Table 5) analyzed about 20,000 skulls from around the world. East Asians averaged 1,415 cm3 , Europeans averaged 1,362 cm3, and Africans averaged 1,268 cm3 . Using external head measures to calculate cranial capacities, Rushton (1992) analyzed a stratified random sample of 6,325 U.S. Army personnel measured in 1988 for fitting helmets and found that Asian Americans averaged 1,416 cm3, European Americans 1,380 cm3, and African Americans 1,359 cm3. Finally, a recent MRI study found that people of African and Caribbean background averaged a smaller brain volume than did those of European background (again see Rushton & Ankney, 1996, for review).

[Anonymous No.4343235]

>>4343209
You haven't damaged any of my arguments in the slightest.

You won't even state your claims because you know you have already been shot down.

[Anonymous No.4343236]

>>4343216
>50%
>not 60-80%
stepitup

[Anonymous No.4343237]

>>4343193
You are the same guy who has been race-baiting /lit/ for weeks. I can tell by the way you type your posts and from certain images you've posted repeatedly.

Please fuck off. And stop acting like you're being censored. You are not "red-pilling" anyone here because we're intelligent enough to do our own research that demolishes anything you claim, you racist scumbag.

[Anonymous No.4343240]

>>4343236
Liberals tend to love citing childhood heritability, ignoring the fact that by full maturity the heritability is 80%.

They even do studies where they have interventions in childhood education and say "look we raised the Black IQ!", and then they ignore the fact that the claimed increase disappears by adulthood.

They are worse than creationists.

[Anonymous No.4343242]

>>4343237
>demolishes anything you claim
That's odd, people have failed to refute a single thing I have said in this thread.

If you can "demolish anything [I] claim", why don't you?

[Anonymous No.4343253]

>>4343240
>>4343242
What's the answer to >>4343198?

[Anonymous No.4343270]

>>4343253
Asking stupid questions that only display your own ignorance of the scientific method does not refute anything.

[Anonymous No.4343276]

>>4343270
>asking for the sample size and a little more precision than the word 'black' on an unsourced graph shows 'ignorance of the scientific method'
Well, okay, champ.

[Anonymous No.4343283]

>>4343242
>people have failed to refute a single thing I have said in this thread
Uh, you were pretty amusingly called out here >>4343158 and here >>4343177.

[Anonymous No.4343285]

>>4343276
It's a representative sample. It compares American Blacks and American Whites.

No more 'precision' is needed to draw the conclusion that on average Blacks are one standard deviation less intelligent than Whites.

Your failure to understand something is not evidence of anything other than your own limitations.

[Anonymous No.4343294]

>>4343285
>It's a representative sample
How many, anon? Come on, don't be coy. And how would a survey of 'American blacks' (I'm going to go ahead and assume the survey doesn't actually trace their more precise African ancestry, since you're not answering me when I ask about it) qualify you to talk about the majority of black people in the world, as you apparently do here >>4343193?

[Anonymous No.4343295]

>>4343283
He (you) doesn't refute my claims. You just claim that I am wrong without providing any refutation.

[Anonymous No.4343305]

>>4343294
American Blacks have a higher average IQ than blacks in Africa.

"[T]he majority of black people in the world" are actually more stupid than that graph suggests.

[Anonymous No.4343318]

>>4343219
>Rushton again

Wow.

>>4343223

So in these two posts you've established that

-the paper you originally posted does not make any reference to genetic markers for IQ
-you cannot provide sources for any established genetic marker for IQ
-the hardest biological evidence you can provide links external head size with intelligence by assuming external head size conforms with brain volume, when this has been shown to not be the case: the correlation between head size and intelligence is far smaller than the correlation between brain volume and intelligence

[Anonymous No.4343323]

Jared Diamond is a hammer in search of a nail. He has shoehorned his discipline into an analysis of history, a field for which he has not studied well enough.

[Anonymous No.4343331]

>>4342035
>the vandals were nomadic at the time they sacked rome
the fuck am I reading?

[Anonymous No.4343345]

>>4343318
>genetic markers of IQ...

Where do you think intelligence comes from? Your spirit?

Autism and down syndrome and other genetic disorders down regulate by our intelligence and thus their IQ on average is absolute shit....

Why do u think humans are smarter than apes? Our economic privilege? Lol

[Anonymous No.4343351]

>>4343345

It's possible that economic privilege could have some role, supposing that it entails getting better nutrition than an ape would.

[Anonymous No.4343367]

Wow, the janitor is deleting individual posts in this thread.

What a moron.

[Anonymous No.4343370]

>>4343351
How do you explain the fact that Black students from families with incomes of $80,000 to $100,000 score considerably lower on the SAT than White students from families with $20,000 to $30,000 incomes? How do you explain why social class factors, all taken together, only cut the Black-White achievement gap by a third? Culture-only theory cannot predict these facts; often its predictions are opposite to the empirical results.

[Anonymous No.4343371]

>>4343351
As discussed in Herrnstein and Murray’s (1994) The Bell Curve, and Rushton’s (1995) Race, Evolution, and Behavior, the heritability of intelligence is now well established from numerous adoption, twin, and family studies. Particularly noteworthy are the genetic contributions of around 80% found in adult twins reared apart. And most transracial adoption studies provide evidence for the heritability of racial differences in IQ. For instance, Korean and Vietnamese children adopted into white American and white Belgian homes were examined in studies by E.A. Clark and J. Hanisee, by M. Frydman and R. Lynn, and by M. Winick et al. Many had been hospitalized for malnutrition. But they went on to develop IQs ten or more points higher than their adoptive national norms. By contrast, the famous Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study marked black/white differences emerged by age 17 even though the black children had been reared in white middle-class families (Weinberg, Scarr & Waldman, 1992).

[Anonymous No.4343374]

Why would groups if ppl that evolved independently and developed unique genetics have different intelligence levels?

Gee I wonder.

[Anonymous No.4343377]

>>4343351
Discoveries using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), which creates a three-dimensional image of the living brain, have shown a strong positive correlation (.44) between brain size and IQ (see Rushton & Ankney, 1996, for a review). And there is more. The National Collaborative Perinatal Project on 53,000 children by Sarah Broman and her colleagues, showed that head perimeter at birth significantly predicts head perimeter at 7 years — and head perimeter at seven years predicts IQ. It also shows that Asian children average a larger head perimeter at birth than do White children who average a larger head perimeter than do Black children.

Racial differences in brain size have been established using a variety of modern methods. Using endocranial volume, for example, Beals et al. (1984, p. 307, Table 5) analyzed about 20,000 skulls from around the world. East Asians averaged 1,415 cm3 , Europeans averaged 1,362 cm3, and Africans averaged 1,268 cm3 . Using external head measures to calculate cranial capacities, Rushton (1992) analyzed a stratified random sample of 6,325 U.S. Army personnel measured in 1988 for fitting helmets and found that Asian Americans averaged 1,416 cm3, European Americans 1,380 cm3, and African Americans 1,359 cm3. Finally, a recent MRI study found that people of African and Caribbean background averaged a smaller brain volume than did those of European background (again see Rushton & Ankney, 1996, for review).

[Anonymous No.4343384]

To answer OP, I would wholeheartedly recommend 'The Story of Civilisation' by Durant.

It is quite possibly one of the greatest history books (/series) written bringing together and covering such a diverse array of topics concerning culture, morals, science, religion, philosophy etc in a very readable and interesting narrative and with a very fair and impartial eye.

It's some 10 volumes, thousands of pages long, and covers right from the beginnings of civilisation to the age of Napolean. It's a fantastically exhaustive, engrossing, and dedicated work, but neither pretentious nor obnoxious. The author has a very pleasant prose, and weaves a coherent narrative placing everything within its context.

It is well referenced, well researched, and full of signposts to further reading to broaden ones inquiry and depth of the particular matter or person at hand.

I would say if history and culture, civilisation, and the charting of humanities progress is what interests you, read this.

[Anonymous No.4343396]

>>4343318
Where do u think intelligence comes from? Your spirit? Of course genes code for it via brain development...

That's why genetic diseases can reduce it like downs and autism

[Anonymous No.4343402]

>>4343384
To further this suggestion, Hobsbawm's series dealing with more modern ages is a pleasant continuation.

[Anonymous No.4343414]

>>4343402
Longue duree, esp Braudel?

[Anonymous No.4343428]

>>4343236
>>4343240

Again, the fact that heritability is a factor that can change from one phase of life to another shows that it is not an exact measurement of how much of your genes you receive from your parents, but rather a measurement of how important those genes are within the population of a specific environment.

The figure is often given as around 50% overall BECAUSE of the vast difference between infancy (as low as 20% heritability) and adulthood (up to 80%).

Do you understand now?

[Anonymous No.4343449]

>discuss a book
>but you aren't allowed to discuss why it is wrong

Liberals: The least tolerant people on earth.

http://fuuka.warosu.org/lit/thread/4341010

[Anonymous No.4343450]

>>4343449
Can we just give this guy the ban he's looking for and be done with it

[Anonymous No.4343453]

>>4343450
The censorship is being done by a janitor, not the mods.

[Anonymous No.4343465]

>>4341517
I read "Guns, Germs and Steel" some years ago, and provided many "aha" moments. Diamond's explanations are extremely compelling, even to someone with more than a passing education in history, geography and historiography. Of course, they are all a "just so" story, rather than an accurate representation of how things turned out. Geography *of course* is important in the historical development of different nations and civilizations. Is geography (along with associated factors of agricultural technology, domesticated animals and his pained explanation about why Europeans were better with guns than the Chinese who invented them) the only factor in why Western Civilization grew to dominate others? Of course it isn't. Europe had no unique access to these things: Asian civilizations had arguably superior such advantages. Victor Davis Hanson makes a similar "one factor" argument in his book "Carnage and Culture." Hanson's argument is that Westerners are simply better at war than other civilizations, because most Westerners were influenced by the Ancient Greeks, who developed a superior method of combat and of developing innovations than other nations did. Is Hanson's theory 100% the One True Answer? No, the rise of Japan and the invincibility of Mongol raiders rather puts his theory to fault, but it's at least as important as geography. There are all kinds of "one factor" arguments possible, all of which could make for as convincing a book as this one. Victorian historians thought it was the vigor of "nordic" civilizations which made Western world domination inevitable: also convincing if that was the only book you had read on that particular day, and also ultimately deeply silly (basically, this means the West dominates because it is dominant). Other Victorian historians made out human history to be the product of great battles, all of which had a huge element of random chance. Spengler also famously thought of civilizations as "cultural organisms" which eventually get old, become frail and die, just like any other organism whose telemeres have gotten shorter. I would imagine, like in, say, finance, the actual explanation for history is kind of complicated. I bet the Greek way of war has something to do with it, along with geography, culture, the Catholic Church, language and a whole lot of random chance. It's nice to think we know exactly why something happened, but a lot of what happens in the world, especially the world of human beings, is just plain random noise. Putting one factor explanations on history as Diamond does is not particularly helpful.

[Anonymous No.4343468]

There is also the matter of historical perspective. Diamond writes as if everything leading up to the present time of European world cultural domination were some kind of historical inevitability, and that *of course* -thus it will always be. This is the sheerest nonsense. At various times in human history, "Western Civilization" consisted of illiterate barbarians living in mud huts. In very recent times in human history (like, say, the 1930s), it kind of looked like that's where the West was heading again. Other civilizations culturally and physically eclipsed or dominated the West through history: the Japanese, the Chinese, the Islamic civilizations, Egyptian, Assyrian, Mongolian, Persian or Russian (if you count them as different, which I do) civilizations made Western civilization irrelevant through vast swathes of human history. Such civilizations may again eclipse Western civilization. Just to take one example, the Zoroastrian Persian civilization lasted longer than Rome, covered more territory and was in many ways more advanced: they even generally beat the Romans in warfare in the middle east. Why should I privilege the Romans over the Persians, just because some nations who were rather vaguely influenced by Rome now dominate the nations who were influenced by the Persians? I privilege them because they are my cultural ancestors, though in 1000 years, the poetry of Rumi may be more important than that of Martial.

Finally, there are the matters of Diamond's historical veracity and bigotry. To address the second thing first, he seems to take a sort of perverse glee in making racial pronouncements to the detriment of "Western" people. According to Diamond, Western people are dirty, and have developed special immune systems; something I find hard to believe, and doubt is backed up by anything resembling statistical fact. Why wouldn't east Asians have developed superior immune systems? They lived in cities longer than the ancestors of most Westerners. Also, according to Diamond, he can tell that the average New Guinean is "on the average more intelligent, more alert, more expressive and more interested in things and people than the average European or American. (page 20, along with a tortured explanation of why Diamond's vacation perceptions are supposed to be superior to a century of psychometric research)" This is the sort of casual bigotry that used to inform Nordicist history about the dominance of the West, except somehow it becomes politically correct when pointed at Western people in modern times.

[Anonymous No.4343484]

>>4343465
>>4343468

I wonder what rules these posts supposedly violated.

[Anonymous No.4343502]

>>4343414
Hobsbawm is more likely to accept that there's room for accident, but he does reflect some of the principles- he's certainly not as broad reaching, but his allowance of retrospect I find more human and less focused on a knowledge based ideal. Particularly in his dealing with WWII and its build up in Age of Extremes, the shit happens approach is much more appreciable- his foreward makes note of his attempts to not see things through his cultural focus and so it has the same sense of greater division than first apparent of Braudel, but less supposition there is the necessary advancement of longue duree to his ends. In part this might be a result of hindsight still being quite short on the last century, and so the developments aren't as yet apparent. Failing that, Hobsbawm's documentation of the machinations of world systems is reasonably broad, if not necessarily presuming the same machine as Braudel and a focus closer to Marxists. I'd recommend Hobsbawn for a greater political understanding, but Braudel for similar periods for historic. (However, I've a hesitancy to accept Braudel's view of capitalism, and so be advised my bias might be in play when I recommend Hobsbawm as the bare minimum as opposed to both, or in the previous recommendation split.)

[Anonymous No.4343511]

>>4343502
Its almost impossible to be a historian of "Europe" as in the post black death society without a theory of capitalism.

[Anonymous No.4343534]

>>4343511
Yes, but Braudel's idea of monopolies isn't one I'd subscribe to. There's much more sound interpretations of capitalism on equal or smaller scale in that time period to choose from imo.

[Anonymous No.4343603]

>>4341010
I know there's a lot of problems with Diamond's works, but what are some good alternatives? I remember something called something "slaughter" being mentioned here at one point?

Some of the other suggestions ITT look interesting too.

[Anonymous No.4343612]

>>4343603
Ah, nevermind, I found it in the archives.

>Carnage and Culture

[Anonymous No.4343792]

>>4343203
Okay, let's take a statement of yours. 'Race is real [and] genetic.'

Tell me what this means. What constitutes 'race,' what is signified by 'real' and 'genetic,' and what does it mean for race to be real and genetic, in terms of what this then predicts and implies?

[Anonymous No.4343874]

>>4343603
>I know there's a lot of problems with Diamond's works
Not that anyone would know by reading /lit/, with all the criticism of the book being censored.

http://fuuka.warosu.org/lit/thread/4341010

[Anonymous No.4343895]

>>4343874
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS7nqwGt4-I

[Anonymous No.4343909]

>>4343895
Yeah, stop crying!

You're just being censored, that's all.

[Anonymous No.4343911]

Censorship is no big deal. Nobody ever died for free speech.

[Anonymous No.4343918]

>>4341184
>God and mortal, but both in one person
I'm catholic and this is what I learned, though.

[Anonymous No.4343960]

>>4342065
We had four major civilization areas, the river valley civilizations: Nile, Mesopotamia, Yellow River, and the Indus Valley.

[Anonymous No.4344033]

I still don't understand why the janitor is so actively censoring criticism of GGS, an atrociously bad and wrong book.

http://fuuka.warosu.org/lit/thread/4341010

[Anonymous No.4344041]

This book really is the liberal bible. A sacred cow, if you will.

Slaying it is forbidden.

[Anonymous No.4345070]

>>4343484
And it was very on topic. I have no idea why.

[Anonymous No.4345105]

>>4345070
Yeah, it bugs me too. I was arguing against the racist guy and it's pretty shitty that the discussion just gets arbritarily terminated. It's not that big a deal on /lit/, obviously, but in wider society the habit of censoring rightwing opinions always feels incredibly counterproductive- aside from being a violation of free speech norms, it gives them this underground/anti-mainstream feel which probably plays right into their hands.

[Anonymous No.4345106]

>>4345105
The only way this is going to change is by emailing the site administration, so they reprimand the janitor.

We have done that before, that's why we were finally allowed the "right-wing lit" threads (those were initially deleted on sight).

[e-mail]

[Anonymous No.4345108]

>>4345105
Urgh, I mean
>arbitrarily