What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? - The World until Yesterday

Diamond has produced a scholarly review of what many have suspected all along- we have strayed from raising our children the way it has been done successfully from thousands of years.

As usual, his writing is brilliant and he draws on examples from across the world and a wide spectrum of subjects.

This wasn't Guns Germs and Steel or even Collapse. More a series of anecdotes about how people get along in the societies not connected to the World / Industrial Culture. The anecdotes are often interesting but the book is not compelling.

I really enjoyed these perspectives on traditional societies--I've taken them to heart and made a lot of these ideas a part of my life. I read it some time back so I'll have to cut short my commentary, but it makes an excellent follow-up to "Collapse."

This volume presents enlightening material on evolution in man's collective behavior by contrasting traditional societies with modern ones. The impact of environmental conditions affecting these societies are discussed.

The book was very repetitive both within and from chapter to chapter. The author often used silly straw man arguments to try to make a point. Really enjoyed Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel but this one disappoints.

On the surface, this book compares the cultures of traditional societies with modern ones. But there is a very important underlying theme going on throughout. While its easy to be shocked/appalled at some of the practices of traditional societies, those behaviors evolved because they offer survival value in that "world". This book really builds on what Dawkins talks about in The Selfish Gene (especially his bit about hawks, doves and game theory). Diamond lays out extensive examples of cultural differences and the reasons for those differences, and pretty soon you can start to see how the concepts of "right" and "wrong" evolve and change over time, and are entirely survival-based.

The first chapters are excellent and informative. The stories tend to get a little reptative although they are all interesting. Mr Diamond knows as much about this material as anyone.

The book changes its focus with the chapter on religion. He is not a historian and is not knowledgeable about the history of religion or the lack of it. The chapter turns into an argument for atheism. No mention is made that the greatest murderers in history were atheists: Hitler, Lenin and Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot and many others.

The remainder of the book is better. The epilogue about primitive and civilized societies has been dealt with by others. Not as good as his other books.

Jared Diamond again takes us on an incredible intellectual journey from the simplistic fiction of the 'noble savage' to a more thorough and nuanced understanding of the forces that shaped human minds and humanity.

Jared Diamond has never been one for the succinct or brevity and this exercise is getting to be a bit strained. While the content of the book is excellent, it would well serve from heavy editing to compress the purpose of his vignettes into paragraphs, not pages. This work does not stand up to the groundbreaking 'Guns, Germs, and Steel,' but to be fair, few other Anthropological work have even come close.

I love every book he writes. The insight this book provides should be required reading by all.
Great insight on why diabetes is so prevalent today, and less so in Europe (postulates that they had their epidemic in the 1600-1700s).
Care for the old, care for the young - there is no right way. Traditional societies have adopted the way that made sense for them, as they were usually living on the edge of life/death.

My favorite passage in the book is the situation where his hired workers found out in the evening that the food caravan hadn't managed to reach them that day. Expecting a near riot, he was pleasantly surprised when they said, "no problem, we will eat tomorrow."

*A full summary of this book is available here: An Executive Summary of Jared Diamond's 'The World Unitl Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies'

The main argument: The onset of agriculture and farming some 11,000 years ago (termed the Neolithic Revolution), is arguably the most significant turning point in the history of our species. Agriculture induced a major population explosion, which then led to urbanization; labor specialization; social stratification; and formalized governance--thus ultimately bringing us to civilization as we know it today. Prior to the Neolithic Revolution--and extending back time out of mind--human beings lived in a far different way. Specifically, our ancestors lived in small, largely egalitarian tribes of no more than 50 to 100 individuals, and hunted and foraged for their food.

The transition from our traditional hunting and gathering lifestyle, to early farming (and herding), to civilization as we know it now (which, on an evolutionary time-scale, occurred but yesterday) has certainly brought with it some very impressive benefits. Indeed, many of us today enjoy comforts and opportunities the likes of which our more traditional ancestors would never have dreamed of. However, it cannot be said that the transition from traditional to modern has left us without any difficulties. Indeed, some would go so far as to say that the problems that civilization has introduced outweigh the benefits that it has brought; and even the most unromantic among us are likely to agree that our experiment in civilization has not been an unmitigated success.

This then brings us to the problem of solving the difficulties that civilization has left us with. Now, when it comes to solving our problems, it is without a doubt the spirit of our age to look ever forward for solutions--by which I mean we tend to look for new technologies and hitherto untested arrangements to help us out of our current predicaments. However, when we consider that our traditional lifestyle served us well for millennia on end, and that it was under this lifestyle wherein we underwent much of the biological and psychological evolution that lives with us to this day, we can begin to see how it may be fruitful to look back at this traditional lifestyle for possible solutions to the problems we now face. (This idea is not new; indeed, the `state of nature' has traditionally been of great interest to philosophers--for it has been thought that understanding how we lived by nature may serve as a guide to help us design the most fitting political communities given our present circumstances).

Also of interest here--and deeply connected to the more practical goal mentioned above--is that investigating our traditional way of life promises to shed light on our underlying human nature in a way that is not possible when we look at ourselves through the obscuring artifice of civilization. It is these things that we stand to gain by learning about traditional societies, and it is this very project that geographer Jared Diamond takes up in his new book The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?

Diamond is certainly not one to deny that civilization has brought with it many important benefits over our traditional way of life (the most important of which, according to the author, being that state governments are much more effective at ending the cycles of violence that tend to plague traditional societies). However, Diamond does contend that there are many areas wherein traditional practices represent an improvement over how we do things in the modern world, and that these practices could (and should) be incorporated into our modern way of life (both at the personal and societal level). Specifically, we could afford to learn a thing or two from traditional societies when it comes to conflict resolution (how to re-establish and mend relationships); raising children (that it really does take a whole village to raise a child); treating the elderly (that they are deserving of respect, and are still capable of contributing to the community in many important ways); approaching risk (with extensive caution); communicating (in a face to face way, and with multiple languages); and in diet and exercise (favoring natural foods, reducing salt, and sugar intake, and adopting a more active lifestyle).

In the course of his exploration of traditional societies, Diamond also delves into why and how our ancestors transitioned from traditional societies to civilizations (with a focus on such areas as social, economic and political stratification, and also religion).

Diamond has made a career out of studying the traditional societies of Papua New Guinea, and is therefore a very credible authority on the subject matter at hand. What's more, his wealth of experience has left him with a trove of interesting and illuminating anecdotes to draw from, and these are on full display here. Finally, I felt that the author always maintained a very sober and balanced view with regards to the benefits and drawbacks of both traditional and modern societies. I would have liked to have seen certain topics discussed more, and others less, but this is mere personal preference. Altogether a very good book. A full summary of the book is available here: An Executive Summary of Jared Diamond's 'The World Unitl Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies'

Jared Diamond's THE WORLD UNTIL YESTERDAY: WHAT CAN WE LEARN from TRADITIONAL SOCIETIES looks at modern and primitive societies and how these differing societies handle threats and disputes, particularly with war-like neighbors. Diplomacy occurs in many forms, depending on your size and sense of security. Diamond looks at how more primitive and generally smaller societies react to, adjust to, make war with, merge with, and absorb a variety of threats that larger nation-states cannot do because of rigidities of size, politics, statehood, vested interests, customs, languages, past history, etc. Diamond raises some interesting points.

I listen to books because of sight issues. I started listening to this book and wasn't quite sure where it was going. It wasn't long when I started to really get into this book and all the things I forgot or didn't consider when thinking about how people live around the world. This book is a real eye opener to how ancient bans and tribes still exist and how they live there lives in comparison to our lives in the USA and Europe. I have learned that it is never to late for old dogs to try new tricks. Anyone open to dealing with true reality will really enjoy this book.

I keep reading this and putting it down. There are some very interesting points to this book. However, unlike his other books, this one seems to be based mostly on personal view points. It does not seem to have the same amount of backing from other scholarly literature as his other books. It is also denser and slower than the Germs, Guns, and Steel. I just can't get engaged.

It is still sitting on my Kindle. I try and read it every once in a while. But I have yet to find real enjoyment in reading it.

This book has discussions based on selected facts and lacks solid understanding of the people which it portrays. Jared Diamond brings up some good points to consider, but his broad based assumptions about peoples of the world can be infuriating.

Interesting book. The author compares cultures at different levels of complexity to modern western cultures. The chapter on child care showed how risk adverse we have become, with one culture allowing babies to play with knives!

Although I enjoyed Diamond's book, Germs, Guns, and Steel, I just couldn't get interested in this one. It was competent, as usual, but I couldn't get past the first chapter. Probably the topic, more than his treatment of it.

We have learned a lot as civilization progressed, but we have apparently forgotten some very important things.It is amazing that so many of modern diseases are directely caused by our addiction to salt, sugar, and alcohol.

after his first 2 books, this was a real disappointment. a lot of redundancy and little new insight into human development. mostly just telling us what we already know or surmise, but with an abundance of wordiness.

I am not a professional sociologist, psychologist, or cultural expert of any kind, nevertheless I thought this book was a great education in how many other cultures work and understanding how our culture arrived to where we are now. I have read Jared Diamond's previous books. I consider Guns Germs and Steel a foundation book for anyone wishing to understand human history. It debunks the notion of superior races and does much to dispel the racism that is still rampant, especially in the United States.

Diamond's stories of his personal pilgrimage had a lot of relevant lessons for the modern world. Our US agricultural system is unsustainable and will crash; indigenous peoples have been trying to tell us this for years (when you fight nature, ala Monsanto, instead of partnering with nature, s... will happen! I may not live to see it, I am 79, but younger people will! One of these days, trucks will stop showing up and lots of people who do not know how to garden and raise livestock and/or hunt/fish will starve. Indigenous people do NOT build damned dams!

Once again Jared Diamond had made a compelling read. The book begins a little slow and many different cultures are reviewed, some with names I had not heard of before, keep up and your interest will pay off in the end.

The world until yesterday is Jared Diamond's (author of Guns Germs and Steel and Collapse) latest book. The book is an account of how tribal communities function and how they construct the fabric of their society and how their constructions, from the author's point of view, can give us valuable insight into improving aspects of modern society. The book is split into 5 parts and includes concepts of community, war, age and dependency, danger within the habitat, religion, language and dietary health. The book is very personal and less of a thesis driven book as much as its an introspective account of the author's life and broad lessons that he has learned. It is interesting and informative but it lacks the academic weight of his previous works.

The first of the five sections focuses on how space is divided in traditional society. The boundaries are much more distinct in tribal society than it is in our porous modern day civilization in which citizens can for the most part freely explore their nations lands. The dangers in crossing into the unfamiliar as well as hostile are detailed through specific personal experiences in the author's travels. The author discusses the differences in trading patterns in traditional society versus modern, in which the former do not specifically trade for comparative advantage and are driven by a broader set of goals and dependencies.

The author then moves into the space of justice and areas of war. In modern society the author notes how civil and criminal justice works and the point of the institutional arrangement. Criminal justice is not about the victims seeking justice it is about the state seeking justice on behalf of civil society. The civil justice system which addresses tort and contract law deals with commercial issues but the formality of it is shown to be very different from conflict resolution in tribal society. The author uses specific stories from his history to detail how conflict resolution works in some tribes and how it can bring much more closure to the parties involved. The author then gives some prescriptive advice about how arbitration and face to face emotional correspondence could potentially be far less costly and more fulfilling for parties involved. The author then moves on to war and how the duration and alliances and death rates are very different in tribal society. The participation rates of tribal society are much higher and the rules of war much different. Though the number of lives is much smaller when comparing tribal war to national wars, the percentages of the population affected are much greater. This sort of narrative is frankly obvious and the ideas about how war is much more deadly for the average tribal member vs member of society is trivial for most people I could imagine reading this sort of book. The differences between how and why society goes to war is discussed and in particular the attitudes of modern society vs tribal society about war is discussed.

The author discusses the different approaches tribal society has for its young and old people. There is no consistency in the various examples used; in some society the elderly are cherished and in the others they are burdens which can be left to die by themselves. The author shows that tribes usually have clear cultural reasons for the differences. He discusses modern society and how their attitudes differ as well, distinguishing Confucian and Western philosophies on their elderly for example. The author brings up the idea of greater inclusiveness of the elderly in taking care of grandchildren in the West. These are interesting points and are policies that will keep many families in better balance but it is often hard to understand where the book is going. Cultural lessons like this, though i agree with them, sometimes seem misplaced and the personal longings of the author come through instead of a concrete message.

The author discusses how our experience shapes our apprehension in different circumstances. People from tribal society brought into modern society can be extremely fearful of cars and crossing the road and our background in understanding risk shapes our perspective on risks worth taking. The author includes a story of what seems like a very dangerous situation in Indonesia with a capsized canoe. The author is in a situation in which he feels like he might have almost died due to the carelessness of youthful and irresponsible boatmen and at the end of the experience when he is safe, he discusses the episode with a native who replies back that he had avoided the boat because he knew the waters can be choppy and this boat crew looked cavalier. The moral of the story is that the risks to the journey could be seen by people who live with those risks but are overlooked by those who don't who assume the expertise of others. The author also discusses other traditional risks in society, disease, starvation and violence. The author discusses how diversification of land holdings though ineffective from personal energy utilization improves survival through the benefits of diversifying the randomness of weather. It then is discussed how modern solutions have overlooked the benefit evolutionary solutions and the evolutionary solutions work for a reason and improve survivability. Honestly parts of the book like this can be quite frustrating as anyone rational would agree, but the modern solution would also say that if one evolved a monetary economy then it is more efficient to consolidate and have a savings system to smooth the variation in weather on your better maintained concentrated plot. If you can have a better aggregate yield by consolidating and use a better trading system to distribute that yield then that is the better solution. Often the benefits of tribal solutions are just descriptions of how when people don't coordinate, diversification is better. That is not a good lesson to try to share, its a scary one.

The book goes on to discuss Religion Language and Health, this is the final part of the book. Much is covered in this chapter, but nothing particularly completely. Evolution is discussed and how the electric eel cant be used as a counterexample of Darwinism (it is used as an example because its electric charge is a large quantum above the next creature and the incrementalism of Darwin would question how this evolved). One later discovers this is used because it was the author's dissertation. It discusses the role of religion and how it has evolved. One valuable insight given is that people who pray feel less anxiety about that which they cannot control than those who don't. Hence it fills a psychological role for people. Much has been written recently on this subject and this is not particularly strong, for better content and origins of human religions and moral code read The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates. The contents of the chapter are a combination of political institution building and moral philosophy. The author moves on to language and describes how being multilingual can deter Alzheimer's. In particular people who are bi/multi lingual are better at reasoning in a changing environment, apparently because the need to always choose words from a larger word choice set instills a background mental discipline that keeps us sharp. That is an interesting fact. That fact alone does not really argue the author's broader point about language and that 7000 languages is variety to be cherished (which i am not for or against just the argument and the conclusion are not along the same line of thought). Finally the author describes diet and how modern diets have brought upon elevated hypertension and diabetes. This dietary science is pretty well documented and the prescription is good (watch your exercise and your diet). Tribal diets and daily routines don't lead to these diseases and hence if we force ourselves to be better balanced we can improve our health and decrease our likelihood to suffer these diseases.

The stories of experience within tribal society are insightful and one gets a good sense of how different tribes live and solve problems. The messages in the book are mixed and more philosophical then a function of the tribal lessons. Though the author tries to draw parallels they are done in ways that are unconvincing and self selected. I do think the author has good ideas about the ways we can improve our lives and taking lessons from a lifestyle most of us have long forgotten but this is not an academic text so much as its a personal history that is sprinkled with personal philosophy. I am glad i read this, but this is a far cry in terms of ideas presented from Guns Germs and Steel and I'm not sure it really fulfills the author's goals of showing what we can learn from traditional society.

The natural conclusion (though perhaps not the last book from Mr. Diamond) to Jared Diamond's books from the Third Chimpanzee (1991) through Why is Sex Fun and Guns, Germs and Steel (both 1997); and Collapse (2005). The World until Yesterday (2012) is a must read for anyone who wishes to understand why there will never be peace in the Middle East or much of Africa and Southeast Asia, and why George W Bush's and Dick Cheney's forages into Afghanistan and Iraq were doomed to failure from Day 1.

Hey, this is really deep and meaningful, its very thought provoking, gives you an understanding of how we've arrived at where we are as a world society.
Mr Diamond sets out his logic in a most engaging manner, its easy to follow.