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Friday, July 08, 2005
More on the Guns, Germs, and Steel Special on PBS
I mentioned a few weeks ago the special that is going to air on PBS (July 11-25) based on Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel book. John Hawks writes about a Science magazine review (subscription only, of course) of the special that turns out to be somewhat critical of the three-part series, as indeed many observers have been of Diamond's GG&S theory in general. John writes:
As for myself, I think the book is very entertaining. But it clearly leaves out much of what we know from archaeology about the origins of complex societies -- and much of what we know is not congenial to his thesis. By and large, Diamond does not think that non-geographic social factors were important to the makeup of complex societies. Nor does he give any credence to the idea that genetic differences have any causal role. It has been many years since I read the book, but my troubles with it mainly derive from these issues. Diamond assumes that the fate of societies is essentially cast by their ecological circumstances. Once agriculture begins, all else is an inevitable consequence of population growth and local ecology.
I've just begun reading Collapse (see my post here), the "sequel" to GG&S but I might have to go back and re-read the latter with a more critical eye. When I first read the book I did take note of the relative lack of archaeology but didn't think it necessarily hurt Diamond's theory of ecological determinism (it was clear he used archaeological evidence, but it wasn't that prominent). In regards to the PBS special, I'm expecting it to be popularized for a general audience (as it should be) but at the same time I hope to get a clearer picture (literally) of Diamond's general theses.
Update: Tad at FieldNotes alerted me that PBS's official website companion to the series is now up in all it's geographical, ecological, and anthropological glory.
Update 2: National Geographic News has an interview with Jared Diamond here.
Posted by Will at July 8, 2005 02:22 PM in In the News