Time for a short #bookReview 📖

I finished reading #TheDawnOfEverything by D. #Graeber and D. #Wengrow.

It's quite a long book that took me way more than a month to go through, but worth the read and the last fifth of the book, post conclusion, is notes and references that can be skipped without losing too much. Overall very interesting, I warmly recommend it, even if some chapters were going a little too deep into the archeological record for my non-specialist tastes.

It was illuminating, specially as I had previously read #GunsGermsAndSteel by J. #Diamond and #Sapiens by Y. N. #Harari, both very popular books, and both adopting a very deterministic view of past human history.
I'm not 100% convinced by the interpretations of Graeber & Wengrow, but they appear to make a real honest effort at understanding our past, they base their reflections on recent archeological records, and present a much more nuanced "story of the human civilizations" than the previously cited books.

The book doesn't really provide any actionnable advice on how we should collectively go forward, but at least it tries to set the record straight on what was previously attempted ... with various level of success.

与其说人类驯化了麦子，不如说麦子驯化了人类，因为要照顾麦子，人只好住下来，守在它旁边。
农业革命是以个体的苦难换取族群数量的增长。农业革命之后，人口数量激增，但每个人的生活水平都下降了。鸡的数量激增，但绝大部分鸡只都受到虐待。
#人类简史 这本书还真是受欢迎啊，图书馆42本audio全部在借！结合那一本#GunsGermsAndSteel #枪炮病菌钢铁，一起看能更好地理解这两本书。
#RLW

Physicists and chemists can formulate universal deterministic laws at the macroscopic level, but biologists and historians can formulate only statistical trends.

#读书笔记 #GunsGermsandSteel

为什么是哥伦布发现新大陆，而不是郑和？
为什么是欧洲殖民了新世界，而不是中国？
#GunsGermsandSteel 里的解释，很有道理。

一个庞大的中央集权系统，一方面可以动员一切资源做大事，但另一方面，掌权人做的任何错误的决定，都难以被纠正，导致整个系统最终走向没落。所以明朝禁止航海后，再无郑和，就算商人有意，也无力扭转掌权人的决定。

(是的我就是在影射当下)

欧洲当时小国林立，就算多数选择了A，只要有一个选择了B并且从中获益，其他的也会被迫选择A，不然会被淘汰。所以，即使哥伦布几经碰壁，最终还是得到了西班牙王室的支助，使得西班牙称霸一时，于是其他国家纷纷效仿。

在系统规模还小的时候，均质的集权的状态有利于其迅速发展壮大。但是当系统到了一定规模，集权下的系统会变得死寂呆板。这时候，异质的分割的状态更有助于整体的发展。

生物学上的生态系统和肿瘤生长也是一样的道理，多样性和异质性越高，越蓬勃。

(想写篇小essay😅 )

#读书笔记 @readingmarathon

#GunsGermsandSteel

影响人类社会发展的因素：

1) Continental differences in the wild plant and animal species available as starting materials for domestication.
2) Rates of diffusion and migration, which differed greatly among continents
3) Diffusion between continents
4) Continental differences in area or total population size

#读书笔记

#读书笔记 #GunsGermsandSteel

谁能想到，大陆板块的的形状竟能影响人类历史进程呢？

欧亚大陆是东西走向的，同纬度的地带气候类似，一个地区发展起来的农业比较容易传播到另一个地区，发展壮大。在农业的基础上，其他技术(轮子，书写等)的传播和交流也更加容易。

相反，美洲和非洲大陆，由于南北的气候和地理差异太多，农业和技术的传播和交流受阻。

@readingmarathon

#读书笔记 #GunsGermsandSteel
#AnnaKareninaPrinciple

Leo Tolstoy (列夫·托尔斯泰)的《安娜·卡列尼娜》里的名句："Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."已经被总结为一种“原则”，用来描述很多其他领域，例如动物的驯化，需要满足诸多条件，缺一不可：

1. Diet(不能吃太多，不能太挑食，前者例子:肉食动物，后者例子:考拉)
2. Growth rate(不能长太慢，比如象)
3. Problems of captive breeding(能在养殖条件下繁殖。有的动物，比如猎豹，必须在野外激烈追逐后雌性才会排卵)
4. Nasty Disposition(不能太暴躁，例子:grizzly bear, African buffalo)
5. Tendency to panic(太容易受惊吓的不行，比如gazelles)
6.Social Structure(要能听话和顺从，适应群居。猫和雪貂就比较特立独行)

#读书笔记 #GunsGermsandSteel

起源于欧亚(Eurasian)的传染病：
smallpox, measles, influenza, plague, tuberculosis, typhus, cholera, malaria, and others

(唯一)起源于美洲大陆(pre-Columbian Native American societies)的传染病：nonsyphilitic treponemas.

#读书笔记 #GunsGermsandSteel

1. Examples of Early Major Crop Types around the Ancient World

2. A mere dozen species account for over 80 percent of the modern world's annual tonnage of all crops. Those dozen blockbusters are the cereals wheat, corn, rice, barley, and sorghum; the pulse soybean; the roots or tubers potato, manioc, and sweet potato; the sugar sources sugarcane and sugar beet; and the fruit banana.

@readingmarathon

#读书笔记 #GunsGermsandSteel
1. Factors Underlying the Broadest Pattern of History
2. Centers of origin of food production
3. Examples of Species Domesticated in Each Area

@readingmarathon

#读书笔记 #GunsGermsandSteel
1. The spread of humans around the world.
2. Polynesian island societies differed greatly in their economic specialization, social complexity, political organization, and material products, related to differences in population size and density, related in turn to differences in island area, fragmentation, and isolation and in opportunities for subsistence and for intensifying food production.)

@readingmarathon