Guns, Germs, and Steel PBS miniseries discussion thread.

[Epublius Rex]

Originally posted by GePap


False. No one else had the same chance to land on the Americas as Europeans, who had already done it by 1000ad given just how close it is as compared to how far away it was from the other advanced cultures.

Oh yes they did, lots of people did. Certainly the Arabs knew what ships were, they used them to invade Europe and they also used them to harass European shipping. And, as I pointed out above, they were closer to the Caribbean.

But, Europeans were already sailing around Africa's Cape to circumvent the blockade put up by Islam in the Mediterranean Sea in order to get to India and China for trade long before 1492. The annals of the Hansiatic League make it quite plain they knew of the Southern Cross in 1300's.

Now, the Sub_Saharan Africans were also closer and didn't do it either, wonder why? You make the rather silly statement that they "didn't develop a sea faring culture" at the same time that you admit that Europeans were capable of making the voyage 500 years before 1500 but could not sustain it economically. Well, you and others here have made the claim that Islam and China had higher technology and more money- yet they did not do it. Certainly Africans to their south had lots of trees to build ships with- that is how the Dutch ended up in South Africa, it was a way station for refitting their merchant ships on their way to fro India and China. ANd yet they didn't do it.

No one did, but those poor, dimwitted backward Europeans. It couldn't have been their culture, though, nawwww, it could never be culture. It must have been those horrible North ATLANTIC STORMS that made them want to venture out in their puny little boats- puny by comparison to the great Chinese Junks. It must have been a Freudian death wish. Yep. A death wish brought on by those horrible cold European nights.

[Theben]

Originally posted by Epublius Rex
You need to learn how to spell.

orphanage
not
orphenage

you do that a lot. Are you sure you read his book properly?

Since we're going down that trail of kiddie insults I guess it's only fair to tell you that you spelled "skyscraper" wrong...

[Epublius Rex]

Originally posted by GePap
Diamond's ideas are not even fully deterministic- there has been plenty of luck and random events and the acts of individual human beings that influenced history. But the grand macrohistory, which is what we seek to explain today, is certainly NOT run by something as vague and ill-defined as "culture".

Umm, it is sheer chicanery to attempt to explain the grand history of mankind with a simple theorem- that's no better then claiming "It's god's will, let it be done".

Hell, economics has a better chance of expaling human development (and in essence, much fo Diamond's work can be seen as how geography influences the different "economies" societies have to work with) in the macor scale than "culture".

I simply do not know how to respond to this. I mean, what is an "expaling human"? I have never seen one, nor heard of one, perhaps a link?

And although I have heard of macro-economics, I have never heard of a "macor scale"- is that one of those mystical Chinese inventions we here so much about- I mean the ones that make them so advanced?

Only a social communist would make the claim that culture is not definable- though I bet you would be first inline to defend an illegal immigrant's right to maintain his/her culture in the midst of another culture. Not only that, but only a true blue Marxist would claim culture had nothing to do with the fate of a nation. I saw one fool make that claim in defending this very book on Amazon- and just like you he used circular arguments that contradicted themselves. What is so funny is that he was not intelligent enough to see what he was doing- he actually believed it made sense- and he even posted a bibliography!

Too funny- except that my taxes go to support the institutions that purport to educate these people.

[Epublius Rex]

Originally posted by Theben


Since we're going down that trail of kiddie insults I guess it's only fair to tell you that you spelled "skyscraper" wrong...

Oh gee, one out of what, 2500 words? Your buddy there can't make it through one sentence without multiple spelling errors.

I have chewed him up without effort- using his own arguments.

[Epublius Rex]

The final proof the GGS is BS is that it fails to account for Ashkenazi Jews and their singular success in the world. I would call the Holocaust something more devastating then "bugs"- but then he also negated the plague, the pox effect on Europeans, polio, typhoid, malaria, etc.

Yep, the Jewish people have known singular success- all over the world, in all climates, under all conditions. Couldn't be their 5,000 year old culture which sustains them, now could it?

Nawww.

[Theben]

Originally posted by Epublius Rex
Menzies is a crackpot- the maps he uses are fakes and were even pointed out as such on the PBS show about him-

http://www.kenspy.com/Menzies/

http://baheyeldin.com/pseudoscience/gavin-menzies-1421-china-discovers-the-world.html

http://www.answers.com/topic/gavin-menzies

Chinese Junks may have been huge, but they were not sea worthy in a way that European or even Phoenician ships of 1500 years previous were. Ever wonder why Europeans didn't build gigantic men of war that size (400 ft.)? Because the wooden keel and beams could not stand the stress of the high seas, that's why. The Chinese could not conceive of a better design, so they stayed home. It is preposterous to claim they just decided to not colonize other areas- they tried in Japan and Korea, but they were beaten back and gave up. They were never anything but slow and cumbersome. They were not built to handle rough seas and most assuredly could not have rounded the Cape in one piece. Think of them as a slow moving barge on a quiet lake and you get the idea of what they were built for- coastal and harbor duty, the calm seas of Asia.

Nice. Btw, did you bother to READ your own links? Lemme help you:

The basic idea that China had a seafaring fleet that roamed far and wide, and explored lands that have never visited by the Chinese before is very plausible, and there are lots of evidence for it.

It is sad though that Menzies had to delve into the realms of pseudo-science, and held on to outrageous claims that lack evidence, such as:

that the Chinese settled North America, based on the flimsy evidence that Verrazano said the natives represented Asians. Of course to a person living in a monoculture five centuries ago, it is easy to confuse Native Americans with Asians. The features are similar after all.
that the Bimini underwater walkway is man made, and formed of the ship ballast, and having man made cement pieces, despite the expert opinion that this is a natural geological formation.
that the Newport Tower was used to measure longitude, despite the fact that this notion was not invented up to two centuries later.

[sic]

Friends of Admiral Zheng He, based in Singapore, maintain that he reached East Africa and the Red Sea, but do not venture to speculate beyond that.

Menzie's claims are obviously bunk. But there is still evidence for a large Chinese fleet that traveled around the China Sea and Indian Ocean, which has relatively calm waters (compared to Pacific & Atlantic). Your "evidence" does nothing to negate this, other than point out that ONE researcher was off his rocker (all 3 sites talk about the same points- and Wikipedia? come on now).

[Epublius Rex]

Originally posted by Theben


Nice. Btw, did you bother to READ your own links? Lemme help you:



Menzie's claims are obviously bunk. But there is still evidence for a large Chinese fleet that traveled around the China Sea and Indian Ocean, which has relatively calm waters (compared to Pacific & Atlantic). Your "evidence" does nothing to negate this, other than point out that ONE researcher was off his rocker (all 3 sites talk about the same points- and Wikipedia? come on now).

You didn't read me- not able to comprehend? Re read the quote you made of my post. I said exactly that- their Junks may have been large, but they were not seaworthy. They could not have handled the Atlantic and it's storms. No one who sails compares the Pacific with the Atlantic, let alone compare the China Sea or Indian Ocean to the North Atlantic. By comparison, those two are calm lakes.

I also pointed it out it was the reason Europeans never built 400 foot long men of war- the beams could not handle the high seas. I also said that the Chinese were incapable of designing a better, more sea worthy ship- even to this day. They buy them from the Russians.

Wikipedia was not mentioned in the post. No links to it, nada.

It is just too easy to beat on you people. Where did you go to school? Harlem? East LA? Help me understand how you can be so devoid of ability.

[Epublius Rex]

Originally posted by GePap


Simple.

Africa did not develop any seafearing cultures.

Leif voyage was from poor and isolated Iceland, a place with no ability to back continuing voyages in order to mae them profitable and of interest to anyone else.

That was easy.

Umm, I believe you meant seafaring cultures. But I would not disagree that Africans were fearful of the water and Europeans were not. Did you know that even as late as 1900 most European sailors could not swim?

[Theben]

My post was in answer to this:

Where's your proof that the voyage ever occurred? or the fleet for that matter? The Chinese themselves make no such claim. The only one who makes that claim has been debunked by real historians including the chinese themselves. Where is your proof?

Now if you're referring to voyages beyond the Cape & across the Pacific I agree with you. But to say that the rest never happened, and that the Chinese themselves make no claim, is sheer foolishness on your part. Unless you're backtracking now? Go ahead.

Btw, that bit on "rough North Atlantic" waters sounds like geographical determinism to me.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by GePap


And the Chinese "colonized" all of southern China, and Sichuan, Yunnan, Tibet eventually then the western deserts-they colonized Taiwan, they took over parts of nothern Vietnam for a while.

The Inca took the altiplano, the Aztecs expanded their empires continually.

JohnT is trying to paint a cultural difference. Territorial expansion is NOT a dervative of culture. Otherwise one might as well say the Mongols were the pinnacle of western culture, or the Arabs.

While territorial expansion is exceedingly common among many cultures it is not a universal trait, and culture has an immense amount to say about how it's done, whether it is done etc. Some cultures are forced to self-regulate because they are surrounded by terrain that limits expansion, or surrounded by cultures they cannot compete effectively with for territory (such as the Bushmen for instance). Some cultures support finding new lands to exploit, while others specialize in warfare and taking what they need as their population increases.

Much of this fits into Diamond's thesis, but much does not. Some aggressive cultures have picked one fight too many and have been erased from the list of active peoples. Others such as the Japanese have proven to be so adaptable that they have been successful as insular island people, as a small counterweight to an enormous neighboring empire, as an empire in their own right and as one of the planets most successful trading people, all within the space of a few centuries. They don't seem to be a great example of geographic determinism to my mind, but rather nimble adapters of culture depending on the situation.

I think that there is certainly some truth to Diamond's thesis, but he applies it far too broadly. He focuses solely on hardware and completely neglects software.

[Spiffor]

Columbus voyage was not the one which sparked the exploitation of America. Columbus was actually considered a failure, as he didn't find his expected route to Asia.

Amerigo Vespucchi is the one who opened the exploitation of America, as he understood that plenty of wealth could be taken there.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by GePap
And what "cultural change" occured? What drove that "cultural change"?

Cultural determinism is inferior to geographical determinism simply by the fact that your basis in one is a fuzzy, hard to define base while the other has an easy to define base.

Yes.
Do we have cultural determinists here? Maybe the racist is one, but the others (JohnT and myself) aren't. We oppose determinism.

[Ted Striker]

Guns, Germs, Steel, and Herpes

[Ramo]

Columbus voyage was not the one which sparked the exploitation of America. Columbus was actually considered a failure, as he didn't find his expected route to Asia.

Amerigo Vespucchi is the one who opened the exploitation of America, as he understood that plenty of wealth could be taken there.

On the contrary, Columbus presided over the exploitation of Hispaniola (modern day Haiti and the Dominican Republic).

I think that there is certainly some truth to Diamond's thesis, but he applies it far too broadly. He focuses solely on hardware and completely neglects software.

I think the thrust of Diamond's thesis, the origination of agricultural civilization is rock solid. The part about political disunity leading to the industrial revolution is a more tenuous thesis, and I don't believe it was meant to be comprehensive.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Epublius Rex
Wikipedia was not mentioned in the post. No links to it, nada.

I suggest you take a closer look at the answers.com article you posted.