Jared Diamond

Bird taxonomy is a difficult field because of the severe anatomical constraints imposed by flight. There are only so many ways to…

— Jared Diamond

What did the last Easter Islander say as he chopped down the last tree? The Easter Islanders didnt have anthropologists.

— Jared Diamond

“We come to conquer this land by his command, that all may come to a knowledge of God and of His Holy…

— Jared Diamond

“With the rise of chiefdoms around 7,500 years ago, people had to learn, for the first time in history, how to encounter…

— Jared Diamond

Human societies vary in lots of independent factors affecting their openness to innovation.

— Jared Diamond

No government is here forever. And there are other forces - the most potent force in our society, in fact, big business…

— Jared Diamond

“Those parasites pass to a person from an eaten animal, but the virus causing laughing sickness (kuru) in the New Guinea highlands…

— Jared Diamond

“...invokes the supposed stimulatory effects of their homeland's cold climate and the inhibitory effects of hot, humid, tropical climates on human creativity…

— Jared Diamond

“Throughout the Americas, diseases introduced with Europeans spread from tribe to tribe far in advance of the Europeans themselves, killing an estimated…

— 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

We study the injustices of history for the same reason that we study genocide, and for the same reason that psychologists study…

— Jared Diamond

I decided that now is the time to start doing the things that really interest me and I find important. It was…

— Jared Diamond

“As a result of that confined distribution, peoples who pride themselves on being civilized have always viewed writing as the sharpest distinction…

— Jared Diamond

Infectious diseases introduced with Europeans, like smallpox and measles, spread from one Indian tribe to another, far in advance of Europeans themselves,…

— Jared Diamond

In fact, everywhere in the world there has been a flux between big and small societies. Big political units are constantly being…

— Jared Diamond

Why were there far more species of domesticated animals in Eurasia than in the Americas? The Americas harbor over a thousand native…

— Jared Diamond

The King's 28 letters have been described by scholars as the world's best alphabet and the most scientific system of writing.

— Jared Diamond

“New signs were created by combining old signs to produce new meanings: for example, the sign for head was combined with the…

— Jared Diamond

Science is often misrepresented as "the body of knowledge acquired by performing replicated controlled experiments in the laboratory." Actually, science is something…

— Jared Diamond

The Anasazi did manage to construct in stone the largest and tallest buildings erected in North America until the Chicago steel girder…

— Jared Diamond

The history of interactions among disparate peoples is what shaped the modern world through conquest, epidemics and genocide. Those collisions created reverberations…

— Jared Diamond

“Some of those solutions include halting population growth, limiting or eliminating nuclear weapons, developing peaceful means for solving international disputes, reducing our…

— Jared Diamond

The southward advance of native African farmers with Central African crops halted in Natal, beyond which Central African crops couldn't grow -…

— Jared Diamond

People often ask, "What is the single most important environmental population problem facing the world today?" A flip answer would be, "The…

— Jared Diamond

Twelve thousand years ago, everybody on earth was a hunter-gatherer; now almost all of us are farmers or else are fed by…

— Jared Diamond