Chapter 1 discusses what happened to (proto)humans up to 11,000 BC.
The divergence from chimps and gorillas occured millions of years ago in Africa and protohuman species spread quickly through Eurasia (no geographical barriers). These primitive species exhibited only limited tool-making ability until the "Great Leap Forward" where Cro-Magnons dominated the landscape with multi-piece tools, art and burials. It is undecided whether the Cro-Magnons developed in one place and spread, or there were simultaneous developments in several places.
During the Leap, New Guinea/Australia (via boats?) were settled and the mega-fauna that evolved without a human presence soon become exist. This has future implications because it left this places with no large animals suitable for domestication.
The America were the last to be settled (11,000 BC), made possible by the Bering land bridge formation during an ice age. Again, they spread rapidly (took only 1000 years to fill up the New World) and caused th extinction of mega-fauna.
This is the setup. Did these different times of settling influence the race to get to germs, guns and steel? America and Eurasia were the largest and more environmentally diverse, so did that help them? Australia/New Guinea is small, but had several island colonizations? Turns out Eurasia won, but the rest of the book will apparent explain why.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment