guns germs & steel by jared diamond

Easter Island study casts doubt on theory of ‘ecocide’ by early population
https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jun/21/easter-island-study-casts-doubt-on-theory-of-ecocide-by-early-population

Easter Island has long been put forward as a prime example of humans undermining their own survival by destroying the environment they rely on. But now fresh data is turning the narrative on its head.

Also known as Rapa Nui, the remote island in Polynesia is well known for its huge stone statues called “moai” and for the idea that its growing population collapsed because of “ecocide”.

The theory – promoted by experts including the Pulitzer prize-winning author Jared Diamond – suggests islanders chopped down palm trees at an unsustainable rate to create gardens, harvest fuel and move statues, which brought on disaster. As a result, the population encountered by Europeans in the 18th century was a shadow of what it had once been.

However, a new study has added to a growing body of evidence offering a very different view.

“Our study confirms that the island couldn’t have supported more than a few thousand people,” said Dr Dylan Davis, a co-author of the work from Columbia University. “As such, contrary to the ecocide narrative, the population present at European arrival wasn’t the remnants of Rapa Nui society, but was likely the society at its peak, living at the levels that were sustainable on the island.”

never read guns germs and steel (or anything else by diamond) but i enjoyed reading this long post engaging with some common criticisms https://blog.daviskedrosky.com/p/jared-diamond-a-reply-to-his-critics

i read about half of GGS a longish while ago and reacted against it, not entirely fairly and partly because i was fascinated by it.

my fundamental criticism is if you like a humanist one and specifically with his stated intent here:

“Perhaps the biggest of these unsolved problems is to establish human history as a historical science, on a par with recognized historical sciences such as evolutionary biology, geology, and climatology.”

i think that aim is… quixotic… at best and misguided or pernicious at worst. history is the sum of many things, as much the expressions on the faces of the students in rembrandt’s the anatomy lesson or eloise and abelard’s correspondence as it is anything else. historians, explicitly data driven historians, such as the annales school, still use the data to drive wider historical insight, rather than making it a science.

all this said, if you compare diamond to say, a slightly odd victorian parson with a pet project, there’s plenty that’s enjoyable and interesting in GGS. and after all such approaches don’t exclude the humanist approach, even if he thinks they might be able to ultimately.

My Dad saw Guns Germs and Steel at the Bath Blues Festival in 1970

Old Easter Island genomes show no sign of a population collapse
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/09/old-easter-island-genomes-show-no-sign-of-a-population-collapse/

(in short, Diamond's thesis in Collapse = wrong)

self-destructive dummies

There is plenty of irony in the fact that Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond's book previous to Collapse, was written specifically to refute the idea that indigenous people were or are in any way less capable, imaginative, observant, adaptable, or intelligent than the people who colonized and subjugated them. He argued rather strongly that the differing rates of technological and social development among various peoples was mostly dependent on geographical and environmental circumstances or historical accidents that neither the indigenous people nor the colonizers had any control over. iow, he apparently believed indigenous people were far from self-destructive dummies.

Where are you getting the phrase "self-destructive dummies" from? It doesn't look like anyone else had used it in this thread, nor is it in the article linked in the post above yours

Sorry. I should have said "self-destructive dopes".

Long presentation from a couple of archeologists who effectively demolish Diamond's hypothesis that Easter Island's inhabitants were a bunch of "self-destructive dopes."

http://longnow.org/seminars/02013/jan/17/statues-walked-what-really-happened-easter-island/

― Elvis Telecom, Monday, March 4, 2013 11:58 AM (eleven years ago)

"self-destructive dopes" comes from Stewart Brand - having a grimacing "really ET, did you have to quote him?" moment rn.

aside, apparently so many people have come into /r/AskHistorians asking about GGaS that all of the criticisms have been rounded up into the FAQ for the group
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/historians_views/#wiki_historians.27_views_of_jared_diamond.27s_.22guns.2C_germs.2C_and_steel.22

and /r/AskAnthropolgy
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/1rzm07/what_are_some_of_the_main_anthropological/