『Guns, Germes and Steel』 and 『 Pidahan』

前回UPしたものを英語で書いてみました。ダメ出ししていただければ、幸いです。





I read GUNS, GERMES, AND STEEL around two years ago. Human beings have spread to all of the continents since they departed from Africa around 70,000 years ago. The book describes 13,000 years of history after humans started living all over the world. And, just recently, I read PIDAHAN. The Pidahan, who are a group of people living along the Amazon River in Brazil, are a minority race. This book is about their language and culture.



Mr. Diamond, who wrote GUNS, GERMES, AND STEEL, is an evolutionary biologist. When he was carrying out fieldwork in New Guinea, New Guinean politician, Yari asked him why there is a great disparity between “the haves” and “the have-nots”. Mr. Diamond says that that question caused him to write this book. Actually, the question of Yari was why New Guinea had been colonized by Europe and why even now there is an imbalance in wealth around the world.



There are “the haves” and “the have-nots”. Roughly speaking, “the haves” are people who escaped from hunting-gathering lives to reach the monetary economy, and “the have-nots” are people who remain in hunter-gatherer lives. According to Mr. Diamond, the determination of the social growth indicator did not depend on the abilities which people originally had but depended on the regions where people had migrated in ancient times. In other words, it depends on the natural environment of the places and the fact that those places had animals which could be tamed and plants which could be farmed. Mr. Diamond wrote this book to prove this theory.



The differences between the haves and the have-nots might have started like this, but the reason of the disparity could not be caused by only this simple fact. Actually, he says that this improvement led the haves to invade and reign over others’ territories owing to subsequent improvement of their lives through the accumulation of surplus food.



These invasions led some races to unavoidable assimilation, but there are some minority races which intently refuse cultural assimilation. This is explained in the other book, Pidahan by Daniel L. Everett.



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