Jared Diamond cares too much about Yali and his New Guini people

 
Jake Glass


The people who have survived millions of years in present day New Guinea are savages and barely above the extinct hominid Australopithecus Africanus in intelligence. In fact they are well below the Yali bugs Jared Diamond and he wrote this book trying to explain why Europeans and Asians have basically a culture of innovation.

average African and in Jared Diamond's book called "Guns, Germs and steel Jared attempts to answer this natives question of why the Western man has so much stuff and his new Guinea people have so little stuff aside from shrunken heads of enemy combatants. This question from his friend
  Jared no doubt has his biases and love for hunter gather societies and he utterly refuses any differences in intelligence in people. He has lived among these people, hunting with them, sharing their food and women, and observing them for many months at a time and Jared looks for reasons to explain their lifestyle in comparison to every settled society. he tries to explain their difficult geography and lack of ideas being spread that could of improved their situation. Jared tries to explain how Eurasian society developed and had more ways for farming to evolve compared to hunter-gatherer societies and as a result they were able to eat better and make more use of time inventing more stuff that Yali's people could never imagine.

Jared spends a number of chapters and time in this book wondering why it was the Spanish that conquered the Aztecs and not the Aztecs invading Europe and it seems in this writing that Jared wishes this was the outcome. He tries to explain how Europeans had more available big animals that could be tamed and used compared to animals in Africa. Jared talks about how better crops in the fertile crescent are the reason civilization started in the Middle East and spread out from there and that certain people like Yali's couldn't benefit from shared knowledge. Diamond is convinced that the reason MesoAmerica civilization didn't develop stronger is because they had few animals they could domesticate and exploit. germs were the real culprit that allowed Europeans to pretty much take over much of the Americas. Jared is still one of my favorite authors but this book is somewhat disappointing because he does not want to include that the real reason that New Guinea people are behind is because they are less intelligent and many groups like these headhunters died off as progress overtook their areas. New Guinea didn't have anything Europeans or Asians sought out and the is the only reason this stone age people survived  for Jared to be able to study and try to explain their inferiority.