Jared Diamond - Peoples Quotes

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Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?

Jared Diamond

People often ask, "What is the single most important environmental/population problem facing the world today?" A flip answer would be, "The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem!"

Jared Diamond

The history of interactions among disparate peoples is what shaped the modern world through conquest, epidemics and genocide. Those collisions created reverberations that have still not died down after many centuries, and that are actively continuing in some of the world's most troubled areas.

Jared Diamond

History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves

Jared Diamond

In short, Europe's colonization of Africa had nothing to do with differences between European and African peoples themselves, as white racists assume. Rather, it was due to accidents of geography and biogeography—in particular, to the continents' different areas, axes, and suites of wild plant and animal species. That is, the different historical trajectories of Africa and Europe stem ultimately from differences in real estate.

Jared Diamond