I remember the first topic i read on this board a year ago. It was a discussion about "Are black people dumb and whites smart?"
If you still do not know the answer to this question then you must read the book Guns, germs and steel. It is one of the best books i read. I am ashemed that i didn't read it before. It is really interesting and makes you think a lot. :m:

The first capsule I read of it makes it sound like the reality-companion to Sid Meier's Civilization games: W.W. Norton (publisher) page (http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/spring99/gunsgerms.htm).

What appears to be an entire chapter is available at that site, as well: click here (http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/spring99/gunsex.htm)

It looks very interesting. Thanks for the mention.

Whos it by???

It's by "Jared Diamond."

Sounds like a pseudo, but I don't know anything about him.

Whos it by???

Jared Diamond.

Really seems to be great, I have not read it yet, all I've read is his short talk about it in Edge.org: Why Did Human History Unfold Differently On Different Continents For The Last 13,000 Years? (http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/diamond/diamond_p1.html)

It sounds good, I might pick it up when igo to the bookstore this week. Thank you. If you look it up on Amazon ( http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393317552/qid=1084145614/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/102-1963718-9148107?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 )

There are good links from amazon to similar fiction and non-fiction books.

Interesting...

Jared Diamond is a UCLA professor, ecologist/physiologist, and works a lot in New Guinea, mostly with birds. Very well known in the field of biology.

It is a very informative book. The basic idea behind it is that the geography of the world has played a major part in the history of progress.

For example, he says that northern Arabia has a wet winter but a dry summer. Because of this plants need to grow fast, produce lots of seeds and then they die. These plants are the ancestors of cereals. Where the climate is more benign, plants grow bigger and take longer to seed and so are less useful to farmers.

These cereals quickly spread east and west but could not spread south into central Africa because it has the wrong climate so Africans had to find different plant to domesticate. But these crops wouldn’t grow in southern Africa because it has a Mediterranean climate. As there was no way for Mediterranean crops to reach there, when Europeans arrived they found only herdsman and huntergatherers.

He also suggests that Europe is made up of islands, separated by seas or mountains (think Britain, Spain, Italy). So no one has ever been able to rule all Europe. Because of this no single leader has been able to suppress progress as people could simple take their ideas (such as the printing press) to another country.

The books well worth a read.

I remember it coming out, a lot of people thought it very good.
Myself, I read a book called "plagues progress" by Arno Karlen, about plagues and disease etc. It really made a point about the disease and parasite burden born by people in Africa. Schistosomiasis, malaria, filaria worms, etc etc. Rememebr many of them are spread by contaminated water, and you can see immediately how much ahrder it was was a civilisation to spread in Africa, since if you got cities etc, a prerequisite of civ, you also got better homes to parasites and nasty stuff. And before the end of the 19th century, Africa was known as the whie mans grave, because the ones who went there died, it was improved sanitation, medicine and better health all round that enabled them to conquer africa. But for much of western history people had been living in exactly the same circumstances as the Africans, but had different diseases, and fewer parasite. The colder climate made some things far less frequent and various other influences meant that life was somewhat less disease ridden.