This is quite the caveat. "Its a good book, except that all the testable claims made are false". Shouldn't that discredit the untestable "narrative" claims? Guns Germs and Steel is a Talmudic exercise in making stuff up to support the author's biases. Its only usefulness is as an example of how to make a superficially convincing case for something totally wrong.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/qvaxPH3ftUQ/

I'm just reading "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and one of the central theses of that book is that discovery was always random and only later was applied useful.

So, usless knowledge might only be useless when initially found and have some application later.

I think any discussion of "Guns, Germs, and Steel" needs to come with the caveat that the author (Jared Diamond) is widely criticized by the greater historical/anthropological/poli-sci community for prioritizing narrative in his books over scientific accuracy.

"Guns" is still a good read, as long as you don't stop there.

> Europeans defeated indigenous peoples throughout history, by superior technology and numbers.

Oh boi, not this horrible and flawed argument again. People have learned nothing from recent research into the impact of diseases in that history? Popular books like "Guns, Germs, and Steel", and "1491" give you a view into these matters and provide one with references for their sources for research.

This idea of "Europe won because it is good at tech" really needs to die. The best weapon Europe had when fighting indigenous people in the Americas was actually various kinds of pox.

"Guns, Germs, and Steel" is a good book, really enjoyable read. But speaking to historian friends of mine has given me the impression that it's not highly regarded in those circles.

Unfortunately I can't give any criticisms beyond that because it has been a long time since I had those discussions and the details just don't come to mind, so I guess really what I'm saying is though it's a popular and enjoyable read, perhaps take the narrative it gives with a pinch of salt, perhaps dig into the current historical perspective and see where it differs?

At a different scale and time Japan was indeed blessed with natural resources.

In the revised edition of Guns, Germs and Steel Jared Diamond tells us that the "agriculture package" sent from the Fertile Crescent 5kya arrived here late: 2.3kya - perhaps 1,000 years later than expected.

The purported reason: Jomon was perhaps the most sophisticated hunter-gatherer society ever. For instance, pottery was created by Jomon hunter-gatherers earlier than anywhere else.

In part, because of the sheer abundance of natural resources in Japan, the Jomon peoples had developed a rich society that agriculturism for a long time simply couldn't compete with.

Did you read about this in Guns, Germs, and Steel by any chance?

Charles Mann's 1492 is a better book than Guns, Germs, and Steel for anything pre-Columbian Americas.

The Mayans had a complete, complex logosyllabic writing system. (I believe the syllabic components are more common than logographic components, but I'm not certain). Individual syllables (or logograms) could be combined into a single glyph block in a variety of ways. This writing system, I believe, is connected to Zapotec and epi-Olmec writing systems, but disentangling who created what and who borrowed from whom in Mesoamerica is challenging.

The Aztecs had what appears to be a proto-writing system, largely capable of only recording proper nouns (predominantly place names); most of the writing would instead be conveyed pictographically. Before the Aztecs, in Classical Mesoamerica, Teotihuacan (which was the major power in the Central Mexico Valley at that time period) appears to have never used any form of writing, despite having conquered Classic Maya city-states which were in full florescence of their writing systems.

Quipus originate at least as early as the Wari culture in the Andes, although (again) people only recognize the final Andean civilization, the Inca. Whether or not they are a writing system is debatable--it's known they encode more than just numeric values (such as place names), but whether they can convey enough information to be considered writing is unknown.

Post-contact, Sequoya developed a syllabary for the Cherokee language based only on the knowledge of the existence of the Latin alphabet (he couldn't read English or any European language, but he did have access to European-language materials--that's why several Cherokee letterforms look like Latin ones but have completely different meanings). Missionaries in Canada developed a syllabary for several aboriginal languages that remains in use by many Cree, Ojibwe, and Inuktitut speakers.

This comment is worded in such a way that I initially disbelieved it. After all, two of the three items in "Guns, Germs, and Steel" are technologies. I remember the book spending a lot of time on diseases, but also remember a lengthy description of Cortes' conquest of the Aztec's who had far superior numbers.

Apparently I remembered incorrectly, and the parent comment is correct. Here's a quote from the book:

> The importance of lethal microbes in human history is well illustrated by Europeans' conquest and depopulation of the New World. Far more Native Americans died in bed from Eurasian germs than on the batlefield from European guns and swords. Those germs undermined Indian resistance by killing most Indians and their leaders and by sapping the survivors' morale. For instance, in 1519 Cortes landed on the coast of Mexico with 600 Spaniards, to conquer the fiercely militaristic Aztec Empire with a population of many millions. That Cortes reached the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, escaped with the loss of "only" two-thirds of his force, and managed to fight his way back to the coast demonstrates both Spanish military advantages and the initial naivete of the Aztecs. But when Cortes's next onslaught came, the Aztecs were no longer naive and fought street by street with the utmost tenacity. What gave the Spaniards a decisive advantage was smallpox, which reached Mexico in 1520 with one infected slave arriving from Spanish Cuba. The resulting epidemic proceeded to kill nearly half of the Aztecs, including Emperor Cuitlahuac. Aztec survivors were demoralized by the mysterious illness that killed Indians and spared Spaniards, as if advertising the Spaniards' invincibility. By 1618, Mexico's initial population of about 20 million had plummeted to about 1.6 million.

Deaths. There is so much beyond "merely" dying within the actual events that unfolded and continue.

Only less than 60,000[0] people die per year from influenza, a family of viruses that is well understood, vaccines somewhat effective and available, and almost everybody has some immunological response against due to previous exposure. Tens of millions are affected by influenza yearly, it stops their work for weeks, causes their family to stop their work and care for them, causes errors and economic cost, social cost, etc. People hate influenza and it does result in critical hospitalizations and death among people all over the place. Mostly old people die from that too, but it ruins everybody's productivity.

A novel virus that is at best like influenza, with an additional asymptomatic cadre, affecting the entire country or world, with a completely naive immune response? You should read Guns, Germs, and Steel[1]

We are clearly capable of acting against and preventing Sars-CoV-2 infection, we are as yet unable to cure aging. How preposterous.

[0] - https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel