[dh997]

GG&S: I had two separate MDs at a gym off campus and the head of my dept (biomedical informatics) exclaim "that's the best book I ever read!"

[kqr2]

GGS has received a lot of criticisms from anthropologists.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/1rzm07/wha...

Like Malcolm Gladwell, Jared Diamond is very skilled at weaving a narrative that offers "aha" insight, however, it seems to come at the expense of cherry picking facts and events from history.

[ehudla]

See this too: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/books/2013/...

[narrator]

Jared Diamond is the king of making money off of people's confirmation biases.

[soperj]

I would say that he still glosses over some stuff. Like the fact that Bison have been domesticated now.

[armenarmen]

Successfully bred by people yes, but domesticated no.

[Houshalter]

Also helps that they have been interbred with domesticated cattle, and we have tons of tools to do it. Good luck rounding up Bison with just primitive tools.

[soperj]

They round them up perfectly fine. They just forced them off cliffs instead of into fenced areas. (Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump)

[Houshalter]

That's not going to domesticate them. You need to put them into a fenced in area for long periods of time, and control the population. Selecting the ones that are the tamest around humans, and killing the ones that are the most aggressive or uncontrollable.

The indians could not have accomplished this (easily.)

[soperj]

Go on and tell me why they couldn't?

[WalterBright]

For the opposing viewpoint, see "Triumph of the West" by J.M. Roberts.

[fsiefken]

Are you referring to Jared Diamonds 'Collapse'?

[nwatson]

GG&S == Guns, Germs, & Steel

[AnimalMuppet]

I suspect dh997 was referring to "Guns, Germs, and Steel".