You've done episodes on the early East Asian, Mesopotamian and American civilizations. Will you be covering the Indus Valley Civilization and Mehrgarh any time in the future? They were roughly contemporaneous with some of those early places like Uruk, no?
A little bit later, more into the middle of the third millennium BC - I'm covering them in two episodes that are scheduled to air April 15 and April 22.
Hey Patrick, I’ve read Against the Grain and was looking for a book to take me into the beginning of historical time in the Middle East — any suggestions?
Then the US came along and dropped hundreds of thousands of bombs, large bomb shells from cannons, millions of rounds of high caliber rounds, and tons of depleted uranium on most of the area killing millions, wounding tens of millions, and displacing tens of millions more in order to save those poor people from ____________.
As B.C.E. and C.E. supplant B.C. and A.D., do you think we will get to a point where we just use the term "Before Present?" You use that term periodically so it got me wondering what academia thinks. To me it just simplifies things. Thoughts?
You've mentioned James C Scott a couple of times now Patrick. I've recently read Guns, Germs and Steel and Sapiens, do you think Against the Grain is a good next book to accompany those to get a decent overview and base understanding?
"Against the Grain" is a much better book in terms of content quality. Scott is a historian whose work over his career has focused on the ground level, peasants and other sub-alterns, and so brings that perspective to a field that traditionally focuses on the elite of society, those who built the monuments and whose names show up in writing. Like all of these authors, Scott has a bias, but I think in this case the bias is helpful as to understand early states, you really need to consider the lives of those at the bottom.
GGS suffers from the usual issue of a biologist writing history. Diamond is a geographer whose background is in birds, and he clearly brings this bias. Biologists do this thing where they take their field of study and assume the paradigms that work there will also explain human history. I've seen this by entomologists who try to view all of human history through the lens of warfare, comparing human armies to beetle prongs. This approach works in the same way that mouse studies are useful for human medicine. It's close enough that the results can be suggestive, but not definitive in the way the authors like to portray them. That being said, while I wouldn't take everything Diamond says as defensible, he does have some important points that are helpful. His discussion of the availability of large-seeded grasses and domesticable animals in Eurasia is excellent, as is the discussion on the evolutionary impact of diseases. The second is greatly aided by Scott's discussion of the "multi-species resettlement camp," so I highly recommend considering them together.
Sapiens, on the other hand, is a bunch of hot air. Harari comes across in the whole book as pretty snobby and full of himself, as though he's imparting some sacred wisdom when he has essentially no understanding of the complex topic himself. Harari is a medievalist by training, and his lack of understanding in other topics really shows. His discussion on the origins of agriculture is nonsensical, based almost entirely on conjecture and an incomplete understanding of the data. It also really doesn't help that he doesn't bother to properly cite his sources. I can't speak about his understanding of other topics, but since he got so much wrong in an area I do know about, I wouldn't be bullish on his quality elsewhere.
If you're looking for a good way to understand the cyclical nature of consolidation and collapse that is highly applicable to early states, a couple good sources are Victor Lieberman's "Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830" and John H. Miller's "A Crude Look at the Whole," specifically chapter 11. A more theoretical underpinning of the cycle, but which is pretty technical, is the 2015 paper by Fath et al, "Navigating the adaptive cycle: an approach to managing the resilience of social systems." You can find that last one here: http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-07467-200224
You've done episodes on the early East Asian, Mesopotamian and American civilizations. Will you be covering the Indus Valley Civilization and Mehrgarh any time in the future? They were roughly contemporaneous with some of those early places like Uruk, no?
A little bit later, more into the middle of the third millennium BC - I'm covering them in two episodes that are scheduled to air April 15 and April 22.
Hey Patrick, I’ve read Against the Grain and was looking for a book to take me into the beginning of historical time in the Middle East — any suggestions?
Then the US came along and dropped hundreds of thousands of bombs, large bomb shells from cannons, millions of rounds of high caliber rounds, and tons of depleted uranium on most of the area killing millions, wounding tens of millions, and displacing tens of millions more in order to save those poor people from ____________.
As B.C.E. and C.E. supplant B.C. and A.D., do you think we will get to a point where we just use the term "Before Present?" You use that term periodically so it got me wondering what academia thinks. To me it just simplifies things. Thoughts?
Terrific analysis! 👍
You've mentioned James C Scott a couple of times now Patrick. I've recently read Guns, Germs and Steel and Sapiens, do you think Against the Grain is a good next book to accompany those to get a decent overview and base understanding?
Definitely - it's very different but operating with the same kind of deep perspective.
Thanks! I'll add it to my list
"Against the Grain" is a much better book in terms of content quality. Scott is a historian whose work over his career has focused on the ground level, peasants and other sub-alterns, and so brings that perspective to a field that traditionally focuses on the elite of society, those who built the monuments and whose names show up in writing. Like all of these authors, Scott has a bias, but I think in this case the bias is helpful as to understand early states, you really need to consider the lives of those at the bottom.
GGS suffers from the usual issue of a biologist writing history. Diamond is a geographer whose background is in birds, and he clearly brings this bias. Biologists do this thing where they take their field of study and assume the paradigms that work there will also explain human history. I've seen this by entomologists who try to view all of human history through the lens of warfare, comparing human armies to beetle prongs. This approach works in the same way that mouse studies are useful for human medicine. It's close enough that the results can be suggestive, but not definitive in the way the authors like to portray them. That being said, while I wouldn't take everything Diamond says as defensible, he does have some important points that are helpful. His discussion of the availability of large-seeded grasses and domesticable animals in Eurasia is excellent, as is the discussion on the evolutionary impact of diseases. The second is greatly aided by Scott's discussion of the "multi-species resettlement camp," so I highly recommend considering them together.
Sapiens, on the other hand, is a bunch of hot air. Harari comes across in the whole book as pretty snobby and full of himself, as though he's imparting some sacred wisdom when he has essentially no understanding of the complex topic himself. Harari is a medievalist by training, and his lack of understanding in other topics really shows. His discussion on the origins of agriculture is nonsensical, based almost entirely on conjecture and an incomplete understanding of the data. It also really doesn't help that he doesn't bother to properly cite his sources. I can't speak about his understanding of other topics, but since he got so much wrong in an area I do know about, I wouldn't be bullish on his quality elsewhere.
If you're looking for a good way to understand the cyclical nature of consolidation and collapse that is highly applicable to early states, a couple good sources are Victor Lieberman's "Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c. 800-1830" and John H. Miller's "A Crude Look at the Whole," specifically chapter 11. A more theoretical underpinning of the cycle, but which is pretty technical, is the 2015 paper by Fath et al, "Navigating the adaptive cycle: an approach to managing the resilience of social systems." You can find that last one here: http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-07467-200224