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literacy made the Spaniards heirs to a huge body of knowledge about human behavior and history.
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The near-simultaneous disappearance of so many large species raises an obvious question: what caused it? An obvious possible answer is that they were killed off or else eliminated indirectly by the first arriving humans. Recall
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1) Risk-taking behavior, essential for efforts at innovation, is more widespread in some societies than in others. (2) The scientific outlook is a unique feature of post-Renaissance European society that has contributed heavily to its modern technological preeminence. (3) Tolerance of diverse views and of heretics fosters innovation, whereas a strongly traditional outlook (as in China's emphasis on ancient Chinese classics) stifles it. (4) ..
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The underlying reason why this transition was piecemeal is that food production systems evolved as a result of the accumulation of many separate decisions about allocating time and effort. Foraging humans, like foraging animals, have only finite time and energy, which they can spend in various ways. We can picture an incipient farmer waking up and asking: Shall I spend today hoeing my garden (predictably yielding a lot of vegetables several..
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the anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss put it, ancient writing's main function was "to facilitate the enslavement of other human beings."
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Jared Diamond |
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ONLY a few areas of the world developed food production independently, and they did so at widely differing times. From those nuclear areas, hunter-gatherers of some neighboring areas learned food production, and peoples of other neighboring areas were replaced by invading food producers from the nuclear areas--again at widely differing times. Finally, peoples of some areas ecologically suitable for food production neither evolved nor acquir..
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Two million years ago, several proto-human lineages had coexisted side by side until a shake-up left only one. It now appears that a similar shake-up occurred within the last 60,000 years, and that all of us alive in the world today are descended from the winner of that upheaval. What was the last missing ingredient whose acquisition helped our ancestor to win?
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Thus, immigrants from Korea really did make a big contribution to the modern Japanese, though we cannot yet say whether that was because of massive immigration or else modest immigration amplified by a high rate of population increase. The Ainu are more nearly the descendants of Japan's ancient Jomon inhabitants, mixed with Korean genes of Yayoi colonists and of the modern Japanese.
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bonobo).
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the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu concluded that Europeans and Christianity posed a threat to the stability of the shogunate and Japan. (In retrospect, when one considers how European military intervention followed the arrival of apparently innocent traders and missionaries in China, India, and many other countries, the threat foreseen by Ieyasu was real.)
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Only after about 20 years did Edison reluctantly concede that the main use of his phonograph was to record and play music.
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DOMESTICABLE ANIMALS ARE ALL ALIKE; EVERY UNDOMESTICABLE animal is undomesticable in its own way.
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the Viking expansion is a good example of what is termed an auto-catalytic process. In chemistry the term catalysis means the speeding-up of a chemical reaction by an added ingredient, such as an enzyme. Some chemical reactions produce a product that also acts as a catalyst, so that the speed of the reaction starts from nothing an then runs away as some product is formed, catalyzing and driving the reaction faster and producing more product..
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Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
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1885 did engines improve to the point that Gottfried Daimler got around to installing one on a bicycle to create the first motorcycle;
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he waited until 1896 to build the first truck.
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Each year, the United States issues about 70,000 patents, only a few of which ultimately reach the stage of commercial production.
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Similarly, in an autocatalytic expanison of a human population, some initial advantages that a people gains (such as technological advantages) bring them profits or discoveries, which in turn stimulate more people to seek profits or discoveries, which result in even more profits and discoveries stimulating even more people to set out, until that people has filled up all the areas available to them with those advantages, at which point the a..
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Polynesians and Aztecs developed dog breeds specifically raised for food.
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Protein starvation is probably also the ultimate reason why cannibalism was widespread in traditional New Guinea highland societies.
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Before the spread of alphabetic writing, systems making much use of logograms were more common and included Egyptian hieroglyphs, Maya glyphs, and Sumerian cuneiform.
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New signs were created by combining old signs to produce new meanings: for example, the sign for head was combined with the sign for bread in order to produce a sign signifying eat.
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Thus, Sumerian writing came to consist of a complex mixture of three types of signs: logograms, referring to a whole word or name; phonetic signs, used in effect for spelling syllables, letters, grammatical elements, or parts of words; and determinatives, which were not pronounced but were used to resolve ambiguities. Nevertheless,
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All of these parallels between Mesoamerican and ancient western Eurasian writing testify to the underlying universality of human creativity. While Sumerian and Mesoamerican languages bear no special relation to each other among the world's languages, both raised similar basic issues in reducing them to writing. The solutions that Sumerians invented before 3000 B.C. were reinvented, halfway around the world, by early Mesoamerican Indians bef..
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As we shall see, the prerequisites for those developments consisted of several features of human society that determined whether a society would find writing useful, and whether the society could support the necessary specialist scribes. Many
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or just inventing a new letter (as our medieval ancestors did when they created the new letters j, u, and w).
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But the Semitic names did possess meaning in Semitic languages: they were the words for familiar objects ('aleph = ox, beth = house, gimel = camel, daleth = door, and so on). These Semitic words were related "acrophonically" to the Semitic consonants to which they refer: that is, the first letter of the word for the object was also the letter named for the object ('a, b, g, d, and so on). In addition, the earliest forms of the Semitic lette..
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Ji Hu Zai Shi Jie De Mei Ge Jiao Luo ,Wo De Na Xie Gao Kao Gu Xue De Peng You Du Zai Jin Li Shuo Fu Zheng Fu Liao Jie Kao Gu Xue De Shi Yong Jie Zhi . Ta Men Qian Fang Bai Ji Di Xiang Rang Ti Gong Ke Yan Jing Fei De Ji Gou Ming Bai Dui Guo Qu She Hui Ming Yun De Yan Jiu Neng Bang Zhu Wo Men Liao Jie Jin Tian Tong Yi Di Qu Jiang Hui Fa Sheng Shi Yao Wen Ti . Er Zui Zhong Yao De Shi ,Po Pi Sheng Tai Huan Jing De Bei Ju Hen Ke Neng Zai Jin Ri ..
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贾雷德·戴蒙德(Jared Diamond) |
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Zai Wo Nian Qing Shi ,Tong Bei Ren Du Zhun Bei Guo Shang 20Nian Ku Ri Zi ,Ru Guo Xing Yun De Hua ,Wan Nian Ye Xu Hui Kuan Yu Xie . Xian Zai De Nian Qing Ren Yi Zao Jiu Xiang Guo Hao Ri Zi ,Tan Dao Gong Zuo ,Di Yi Ge Wen Ti Jiu Shi 'Xin Shui Duo Shao ?Gong Zuo Shi Jian Duo Chang ?You Mei You Jia Qi ?'"Mei Yi Ge Wo Ren Shi De Meng Da Na Nong Min Bu Shi Dan You Zi Ji De Zi Nu Hui Bu Hui Ji Cheng Zu Ye ,Jiu Shi Yi Jing Que Zhi Ta Men Bu Yuan Yi..
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贾雷德·戴蒙德(Jared Diamond) |
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Als ik niet meer zou kunnen vissen, zou ik een grote voorraad morfine aanleggen en diep het bos intrekken. Ik zou een afgelegen plek kiezen waar niemand ooit mijn lijk zou vinden en van waaruit ik een prachtig uitzicht zou hebben. Ik zou met mijn gezicht naar dat uitzicht gaan liggen - en mijn morfine nemen.
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Dat wil zeggen dat de problemen van Montana voor het grootste deel niet eenvoudigweg kunnen worden toegeschreven aan zelfzuchtige booswichten die willens en wetens profiteren van hun buren. In plaats daarvan zijn het conflicten tusseen mensen die vanuit hun achtergrond en normen kiezen voor een manier van doen die verschilt van die waar mensen met een andere achtergrond en andere waarden voor kiezen.
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SO MUCH FOR our dispassionate examination of the germ's interests. Now let's get back to considering our own selfish interests: to stay alive and healthy, best done by killing the damned germs. One common response of ours to infection is to develop a fever. Again, we're used to considering fever as a "symptom of disease," as if it developed inevitably without serving any function. But regulation of body temperature is under our genetic cont..
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history is not "just one damn fact after another," as a cynic put it. There really are broad patterns to history, and the search for their explanation is as productive as it is fascinating."
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Against other illnesses, though--including measles, mumps, rubella, pertussis, and the now defeated smallpox--our antibodies stimulated by one infection confer lifelong immunity. That's the principle of vaccination: to stimulate our antibody production without our having to go through the actual experience of the disease, by inoculating us with a dead or weakened strain of microbe.
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In an epidemic those people with genes for resistance to that particular microbe are more likely to survive than are people lacking such genes. As a result, over the course of history, human populations repeatedly exposed to a particular pathogen have come to consist of a higher proportion of individuals with those genes for resistance--just because unfortunate individuals without the genes were less likely to survive to pass their genes on..
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Sui Zhao Bi Te Lu Gu De Ren Kou Bu Duan Zeng Chang ,Hao Wu Yi Wen ,Dui Sheng Huo Yong Shui De Xu Qiu Ye Da Da Ti Gao . Dang Di Shui Lun Tan De Xie Diao Ren Luo Ke Sha *Fa Lan Jian Yi Da Jia ,Zai Jian Xin Fang Zi Shi Jiang Shui Jing Wa De Shen Yi Xie ,Yin Wei "Cha Zai Nai Xi Li De Xi Guan Yue Lai Yue Duo ". Ye Jiu Shi Shuo ,Wei Yu Tong Yi Han Shui Ceng De Shui Jing Yue Duo ,Shui Wei Hui Yin Ci Xia Jiang . Meng Da Na Dang Di De Fa Lu He Fa Gu..
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贾雷德·戴蒙德(Jared Diamond) |
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New Guinea's laughing sickness, transmitted by cannibalism and caused by a slow-acting virus from which no one has ever recovered. Kuru was on its way to exterminating New Guinea's Fore tribe of 20,000 people, until the establishment of Australian government control around 1959 ended cannibalism and thereby the transmission of kuru. The
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A fatal disease vanishing for another reason was New Guinea's laughing sickness, transmitted by cannibalism and caused by a slow-acting virus from which no one has ever recovered. Kuru was on its way to exterminating New Guinea's Fore tribe of 20,000 people, until the establishment of Australian government control around 1959 ended cannibalism and thereby the transmission of kuru. The
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NINETEENTH-CENTURY AUTHORS TENDED TO INTERPRET history as a progression from savagery to civilization. Key hallmarks of this transition included the development of agriculture, metallurgy, complex technology, centralized government, and writing. Of these, writing was traditionally the one most restricted geographically: until the expansions of Islam and of colonial Europeans, it was absent from Australia, Pacific islands, subequatorial Afri..
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As a result of that confined distribution, peoples who pride themselves on being civilized have always viewed writing as the sharpest distinction raising them above "barbarians" or "savages."
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Knowledge brings power. Hence writing brings power to modern societies, by making it possible to transmit knowledge with far greater accuracy and in far greater quantity and detail, from more distant lands and more remote times. Of
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1,000 out of the world's 6,000 languages, crammed into an area only slightly larger than that of Texas,
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Many modern alphabets, including ours, retain with minor modifications that original sequence (and, in the case of Greek, even the letters' original names: alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and so on) over 3,000 years later. One
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New Guinea has by far the highest concentration of languages in the world: 1,000 out of the world's 6,000 languages, crammed into an area only slightly larger than that of Texas, and divided into dozens of language families and isolated languages as different from each other as English is from Chinese. Nearly half of all New Guinea languages have fewer than 500 speakers, and even the largest language groups (still with a mere 100,000 speake..
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