WEBVTT NOTE The Spread of Humans Around the World: The Extension and Intensification of the Division of Labor 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.000 So for this lecture, I'm going high-tech, distributing a few pages. 2 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:21.000 That is typically as far as I go in my classes at the University of Nevada Las Vegas also. 3 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:28.000 I've never used anything more high-tech than this. 4 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:39.000 Again, let me make a few personal remarks. 5 00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:49.920 One is, since some of you have seen the videotape of Murray Rothbard, I should mention that for 6 00:00:49.920 --> 00:00:57.680 For the last 10 years of his life, I was his closest colleague. 7 00:00:57.680 --> 00:01:03.280 In a way, I was his intellectual bodyguard. 8 00:01:03.280 --> 00:01:13.760 I came to the United States in 1985 and worked with Murray for a year in New York City. 9 00:01:13.760 --> 00:01:18.240 When he was out of town, then I taught his classes. 10 00:01:18.240 --> 00:01:27.340 In 1986 he received an offer for an endowed chair at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 11 00:01:27.340 --> 00:01:39.040 which was the first big position that he ever held, and at that time there was another opening, 12 00:01:39.040 --> 00:01:46.600 and he asked me to come with him, and by accident I got that job too. 13 00:01:46.600 --> 00:01:54.040 was I think the only year at that university where it was possible but that both of us 14 00:01:54.040 --> 00:02:01.480 could be hired from that moment on the composition of the department had changed in such a way 15 00:02:01.480 --> 00:02:08.780 that we never again would have received the job and then I stayed there until he died 16 00:02:08.780 --> 00:02:24.780 in 1995 and now I'm the only lonely hold out there that they can no longer get rid of. 17 00:02:24.780 --> 00:02:31.740 The other remark concerns the lectures. 18 00:02:31.740 --> 00:02:45.740 This is the structure of the lectures. It's supposed to be the structure of my next book project that I have. 19 00:02:45.740 --> 00:02:54.740 Because of that, in a way, I put more work into it than you normally tend to do. 20 00:02:54.740 --> 00:03:06.740 and on top of it, it is Lew Rockwell who by inviting me always forces me to overcome my natural laziness 21 00:03:06.740 --> 00:03:14.740 and put all my energy together and then prepare myself for these occasions. 22 00:03:14.740 --> 00:03:34.740 In this lecture I want to talk about the spread of humans around the world and the extension and the intensification of the division of labor. 23 00:03:34.740 --> 00:03:50.740 This subject will be continued to a certain extent in the next lecture which I will give tomorrow morning. 24 00:03:50.740 --> 00:04:09.860 Homo sapiens, men as we know it, who is about the cranial volume that we have, is estimated 25 00:04:09.860 --> 00:04:26.660 to be about 500,000 years old and takes on the current appearance roughly about 100,000 26 00:04:26.660 --> 00:04:29.860 years ago. 27 00:04:29.860 --> 00:04:41.740 And as I mentioned in the previous lecture, the point when the language capability developed 28 00:04:41.740 --> 00:04:52.500 is dated somehow from 150,000 to 50,000 years ago. 29 00:04:52.500 --> 00:05:12.500 There is general agreement, not complete agreement, but pretty much unanimous agreement that mankind spread out from Africa. 30 00:05:12.500 --> 00:05:19.860 And if you take a look at this first chart here, which 31 00:05:19.860 --> 00:05:25.860 is taken from the Cavalli's Forza book, 32 00:05:25.860 --> 00:05:34.340 he gives you some rough dates about this process. 33 00:05:34.340 --> 00:06:02.340 So his estimation is that people began to leave Africa 60,000 to 70,000 years ago, maybe up to 100,000 years ago and that the first spreading was to Asia. 34 00:06:02.340 --> 00:06:19.940 We have the oldest findings of human skeletons and so forth in China, dated at 67,000 years old. 35 00:06:19.940 --> 00:06:39.460 And then from China, they traveled to Australia, which he dates roughly at 55,000 years ago. 36 00:06:39.460 --> 00:06:44.980 And this travel time, I'll have more to say about that, 37 00:06:44.980 --> 00:06:59.980 This travel time took about 10,000 years from Africa to Australia. 38 00:06:59.980 --> 00:07:06.980 One will have to say here something about the possibilities of this traveling. 39 00:07:06.980 --> 00:07:27.980 You have to keep in mind there existed a few glacial periods, actually four glacial periods in the last 900,000 years and each of those lasted about 75,000 years. 40 00:07:27.980 --> 00:07:39.980 The last one of these glacial periods lasted from 25,000 years ago to about 13,000 years ago. 41 00:07:39.980 --> 00:07:48.980 And during these glacial periods, of course, the level of the oceans dropped considerably 42 00:07:48.980 --> 00:08:14.980 The reason for this is because snow accumulated on the mountains and less water melted, so that the gaps between Southeast Asia and Indonesia and Borneo and Australia became rather small. 43 00:08:14.980 --> 00:08:26.380 They did not disappear completely, but they were small enough that they could be traversed by very small boats. 44 00:08:26.380 --> 00:08:40.580 The Sahara Desert, for instance, is only 3,000 years old. 45 00:08:40.580 --> 00:09:07.580 Before that, that was not exactly the most fruitful of areas, but nonetheless a region that could be used for hunting and gathering activities and also for agricultural purposes. 46 00:09:07.580 --> 00:09:28.580 The next break-off of the population is then the break-off to Europe, which Cavalli's Forza dates around 40,000, 43,000 years ago. 47 00:09:28.580 --> 00:09:40.580 And the latest split-off is the one to America across the Bering Street, 48 00:09:40.580 --> 00:09:46.580 for which again very rough estimates only exist. 49 00:09:46.580 --> 00:09:55.580 They range from 15,000 years ago to 50,000 years ago. 50 00:09:55.580 --> 00:10:24.580 And the spreading of the population on the American continent is estimated to have lasted about a thousand years from the north all the way down to Patagonia, which would be something like 8 miles per year, so not a huge amount per year. 51 00:10:24.580 --> 00:10:40.580 The spreading at this time is either by foot or, and that was significantly faster, by boat. 52 00:10:40.580 --> 00:11:05.580 Boat travel remained the fastest way of traveling until the domestication of horses, which occurs only some 6,000 years ago. 53 00:11:05.580 --> 00:11:30.580 So until that time, as I said, nothing but walking was possible, and as a matter of fact, as you probably know from your history lessons, that was pretty much the only way of transportation that existed on the American continent until the arrival of Europeans. 54 00:11:30.580 --> 00:11:36.580 We always just picture these Indians on horses, but of course there existed no horses whatsoever. 55 00:11:36.580 --> 00:11:46.580 And they existed actually on the American continent, not even wheels. 56 00:11:46.580 --> 00:11:56.580 That is to say people transported things by schlepping some wooden planks behind them 57 00:11:56.580 --> 00:12:23.580 and all the things behind them on which they had, whatever they had to transport during these early times until about 12,000 to 10,000 years ago all of these populations, all of these people 58 00:12:23.580 --> 00:12:46.580 were hunters and gatherers, moving in small speeds around, mostly in small bands of 50-60 people, 59 00:12:46.580 --> 00:12:52.580 But several bands usually had some sort of connection. 60 00:12:52.580 --> 00:13:10.580 There exists some biological reason that minimal group sizes have to be about 500 people in order to prevent some sort of genetic degeneration. 61 00:13:10.580 --> 00:13:29.580 So one can expect that even if they were in small bands, there was some sort of communication and intermarriage and so forth with people of this group size. 62 00:13:29.580 --> 00:13:39.580 The density of population was, as you can imagine, of course, extremely low. 63 00:13:39.580 --> 00:13:51.580 Again, the estimation is there that in hunter-gatherer societies, you can have only one person per square mile. 64 00:13:51.580 --> 00:14:10.580 For a larger population, the earth did not produce enough foodstuff, so to speak, to support them. 65 00:14:10.580 --> 00:14:36.580 Population growth was extremely low, partly because of birth control techniques used by people by long breastfeeding and things of that nature. 66 00:14:36.580 --> 00:15:05.580 and, of course, because of high mortality rates, the estimation is that 100,000 years ago, so to speak, at the beginning of this process that I'm talking about, the population size was about 50,000 on the world. 67 00:15:05.580 --> 00:15:17.580 50,000 on the entire globe, and 10,000 years ago, that is the period that I will talk about a little bit later, 68 00:15:17.580 --> 00:15:30.580 the so-called Neolithic Revolution, when people begin to settle down and begin agricultural existence, 69 00:15:30.580 --> 00:15:42.580 The numbers there are between 1 and 15 million and the estimation that most people accept is about 5 million. 70 00:15:42.580 --> 00:15:55.580 So from 100,000 years ago to 10,000 years ago, 90,000 years of time, 71 00:15:55.580 --> 00:16:14.580 The population increases only from 50,000 to 5 million, and that is roughly a doubling of the population every 13-14,000 years. 72 00:16:14.580 --> 00:16:36.580 Again, to give you some sort of ballpark figure, what the speed of doubling populations is now, from the 1950s on, the populations doubled every 35 years. 73 00:16:36.580 --> 00:16:49.580 So you can see based on this figure what extremely small growth of population took place during this period. 74 00:16:49.580 --> 00:16:59.580 The groups basically simply broke away from each other as soon as there was not enough foodstuff available 75 00:16:59.580 --> 00:17:28.580 and then expanded to two different areas and further and further along, as I said, many times by boat, frequently also by foot, and they existed then for a considerable amount of times, 90,000 years or so. 76 00:17:28.580 --> 00:17:42.180 So, very little communication and intermingling of these breakaway groups, which explains, 77 00:17:42.180 --> 00:17:55.320 so to speak, the fact that quite different genetic stocks of people develop because very 78 00:17:55.320 --> 00:18:05.560 very limited inbreeding took place. In addition, take into consideration these glacial periods 79 00:18:05.560 --> 00:18:13.800 which cut off sometimes for ten thousands of years communication between groups that 80 00:18:13.800 --> 00:18:24.840 were not distance-wise far apart from each other. The Alps, for instance, became essentially 81 00:18:24.840 --> 00:18:37.840 is really impassable, so people who were in the north lost all the contact with people who were in the south. 82 00:18:37.840 --> 00:18:51.840 The weather or the rains in Eurasia come mostly from the west and eastward, 83 00:18:51.840 --> 00:18:59.080 Most of the snow accumulated in the west and the drier climates were in the east so then 84 00:18:59.080 --> 00:19:07.480 people moved from the west to the east and then partially after the glacial periods were 85 00:19:07.480 --> 00:19:18.160 over then returned back to more western regions. 86 00:19:18.160 --> 00:19:28.300 So practically no contact between these groups, of course, particularly pronounced in cases 87 00:19:28.300 --> 00:19:40.880 such as Australia and Borneo, which became then separated by large bodies of waters as 88 00:19:40.880 --> 00:19:50.080 as compared to the periods when you could cross these straits. 89 00:19:50.080 --> 00:20:00.200 And there exists a general law, which is easy to grasp, 90 00:20:00.200 --> 00:20:08.960 that genetic distance increases in correlation 91 00:20:08.960 --> 00:20:16.960 with physical distance and with the separation in time. 92 00:20:16.960 --> 00:20:26.460 And I provided you with two charts 93 00:20:26.460 --> 00:20:30.900 that are just supposed to give you some rough indication of this. 94 00:20:30.900 --> 00:20:39.020 I have no intention to go into that in great detail. 95 00:20:39.020 --> 00:20:46.580 But the first one, this tree diagram, 96 00:20:46.580 --> 00:20:54.140 indicates roughly the distance in the genetic material 97 00:20:54.140 --> 00:21:01.220 of the populations living in these major areas, 98 00:21:01.220 --> 00:21:13.220 and reflect in a way the periods when population broke away 99 00:21:13.220 --> 00:21:15.780 from each other, so indicating, for instance, 100 00:21:15.780 --> 00:21:24.460 that the first split occurred between Africa and Asia. 101 00:21:24.460 --> 00:21:30.780 And then the second split occurred 102 00:21:30.780 --> 00:21:34.860 between Asia and Europe. 103 00:21:34.860 --> 00:21:39.340 And the third one was Asia and America, 104 00:21:39.340 --> 00:21:44.140 and indicating also the wide genetic distance, 105 00:21:44.140 --> 00:21:54.140 So to speak, we need Africa on the one hand and the oceanic population on the other. 106 00:21:54.140 --> 00:22:07.740 The other table is more detailed, as you see it has on the left side the genetic relationships, 107 00:22:07.740 --> 00:22:22.420 How far or close some of the major ethnic groups are genetically and on the right side 108 00:22:22.420 --> 00:22:30.180 how close or distance they are in terms of their languages. 109 00:22:30.180 --> 00:22:37.380 There's obviously some sort of correlation between language groups and linguistic groups, 110 00:22:37.380 --> 00:22:46.540 but by no means a perfect one, which can be of course explained mostly by, again, by invasions 111 00:22:46.540 --> 00:22:55.480 of various people who then spread their own language also in regions that were genetically 112 00:22:55.480 --> 00:23:03.960 originally different, or sometimes you have regions that are genetically quite close, but 113 00:23:03.960 --> 00:23:11.360 they have broad languages from far away distances. An example would be, for instance, in the 114 00:23:11.360 --> 00:23:24.800 European scenery, let's say, the Finns and the Hungarians and the Turks, which have somewhat 115 00:23:24.800 --> 00:23:40.800 are not closely related languages, even though they are physically quite far removed from each other. 116 00:23:40.800 --> 00:23:56.800 I'll come back to this type of topic about different ethnicities and related subjects in a later lecture. 117 00:23:56.800 --> 00:24:06.800 For the current purpose, this is entirely sufficient just to get some sort of feeling 118 00:24:06.800 --> 00:24:21.800 and how the separation and the movement of hunter-gatherers with very little contact with each other automatically brings these results about. 119 00:24:21.800 --> 00:24:48.800 In addition, this separation and very limited cooperation between different groups brings also about a tendency to create a large variety of languages. 120 00:24:48.800 --> 00:25:06.800 You will see later on, there exists of course also a tendency for languages to be reduced in number at the moment when the contacts between various groups becomes intensified. 121 00:25:06.800 --> 00:25:31.800 That is, when division of labor is no longer restricted to these small groups, but division of labor becomes more extensive and more intensive, including ever larger regions of the population, then there is a countervailing tendency. 122 00:25:31.800 --> 00:25:38.880 It's because then there exists, of course, again, a need for people to communicate with 123 00:25:38.880 --> 00:25:46.040 each other and one can recognize that it is then an advantage to speak languages that 124 00:25:46.040 --> 00:25:49.000 are spoken by very many people. 125 00:25:49.000 --> 00:25:54.760 If you are living more or less enclosed in small groups and the division of labor is 126 00:25:54.760 --> 00:26:00.840 restricted to these small groups, then there is no disadvantage in just having a different 127 00:26:00.840 --> 00:26:14.280 Language for each one of these groups. Currently there exists about 5,000 to 6,000 languages. 128 00:26:14.280 --> 00:26:24.040 But to give you an extreme example, 1,000 of these 5,000 to 6,000 languages are spoken 129 00:26:24.040 --> 00:26:38.560 And for instance, in Guinea, and half of these thousand languages have no more than 500 speakers. 130 00:26:38.560 --> 00:26:43.480 That is pretty close to the number that I gave you, what the minimum size of a group 131 00:26:43.480 --> 00:26:52.960 has to be in order to avoid negative genetic effects, so to speak. 132 00:26:52.960 --> 00:27:01.040 And there are only a few in Guinea that are spoken by more than 100,000 people. 133 00:27:01.040 --> 00:27:11.320 Again, that also immediately indicates something about the state of development of this place, 134 00:27:11.320 --> 00:27:20.080 that obviously that is not a place in which the division of labor is very extensive and 135 00:27:20.080 --> 00:27:21.080 intensive. 136 00:27:21.080 --> 00:27:43.080 They are still living rather isolated and have only division of labor within their little tribes without much need to learn other languages or one language taking over other languages and become the dominant one. 137 00:27:43.080 --> 00:28:11.080 So division of labor at this stage of a very, very limited kind, obviously women tend to be more the gatherers, men tend to be more the hunters, there are some people who make tools and so forth, but the number of tools and instruments is also very limited. 138 00:28:11.080 --> 00:28:29.080 So by and large, very small numbers of different professions, if we can talk about that at all, there are probably no one who is really specializing full-time in certain types of activities. 139 00:28:29.080 --> 00:28:42.560 The division of labor even shrinks at times during this period, which leads to a situation 140 00:28:42.560 --> 00:28:56.120 where people unlearn things that were already part of the accumulated knowledge of mankind. 141 00:28:56.120 --> 00:29:06.920 Those things took place in particular in the cases of New Guinea and Australia and Tasmania, 142 00:29:06.920 --> 00:29:15.320 that is places that for tens of thousands of years were completely isolated from anybody 143 00:29:15.320 --> 00:29:22.380 else and could not even occasionally, so to speak, adopt techniques or knowledge that 144 00:29:22.380 --> 00:29:26.340 had been accumulated at other parts of the world. 145 00:29:26.340 --> 00:29:40.900 So for instance, the Australian aborigines still used stone tools in around 1800. 146 00:29:40.900 --> 00:29:52.080 In Tasmania, which were cut off for some 10,000 years from any other place, these people must 147 00:29:52.080 --> 00:30:00.640 Obviously have known at some time the technique of constructing boats, but when they were 148 00:30:00.640 --> 00:30:07.920 rediscovered they were not able to make boats. 149 00:30:07.920 --> 00:30:16.960 They must at some time have had the capability of using bows and arrows, but when they were 150 00:30:16.960 --> 00:30:30.260 rediscovered they were not able to use arrows and bows because the population had become 151 00:30:30.260 --> 00:30:38.540 too small and no influx of innovation came in so these people with a smaller population 152 00:30:38.540 --> 00:30:46.900 simply became less informed, less knowledgeable than they must have been at the beginning. 153 00:30:46.900 --> 00:30:53.900 The same is also true, by the way, for Eskimos and Polynesians. 154 00:30:53.900 --> 00:31:01.940 The Polynesians also had partially unlearned the ability of making boats, even though they 155 00:31:01.940 --> 00:31:13.980 must have had this ability at some time in the past, unless they were very good swimmers. 156 00:31:13.980 --> 00:31:27.140 As a little side remark, there exists an explanation why Polynesians tend to be very fat people. 157 00:31:27.140 --> 00:31:35.800 That is because fat people had, so to speak, an advantage to survive at long boat trips 158 00:31:35.800 --> 00:31:40.200 where they didn't know where they would end up. 159 00:31:40.200 --> 00:31:48.540 So people who had accumulated a lot of body fat or so had a higher chance to finally find 160 00:31:48.540 --> 00:31:56.040 whatever Fiji Islands or whatever these places are, which is, so to speak, an explanation 161 00:31:56.040 --> 00:32:03.760 why we still find massive people on these places, far more massive than you would find 162 00:32:03.760 --> 00:32:10.880 them in other regions of the world. 163 00:32:10.880 --> 00:32:20.160 So then we arrive at one of the great revolutions 164 00:32:20.160 --> 00:32:21.920 in human development. 165 00:32:21.920 --> 00:32:28.320 And that is the so-called Neolithic Revolution, 166 00:32:28.320 --> 00:32:36.520 which took place about 12,000 to 10,000 years ago. 167 00:32:36.520 --> 00:32:41.600 And the main explanatory factor for this 168 00:32:41.600 --> 00:32:49.800 was that land became gradually scarcer and scarcer 169 00:32:49.800 --> 00:32:53.480 and more valuable. 170 00:32:53.480 --> 00:33:16.480 And pressure, so to speak, arose to find a solution to the problem, how do we feed the people who cannot walk around and break away and find new hunting and gathering places. 171 00:33:16.480 --> 00:33:30.480 We have to make it possible that people can live in larger numbers on smaller territories. 172 00:33:30.480 --> 00:33:40.480 Before, land was more or less treated as a free good, and if it is treated as a free good, 173 00:33:40.480 --> 00:33:48.920 There existed, of course, also no incentive to appropriate it, to make land what would 174 00:33:48.920 --> 00:33:51.880 establish property in land. 175 00:33:51.880 --> 00:33:57.800 In the previous lecture I explained it was, of course, perfectly natural that people consider 176 00:33:57.800 --> 00:34:03.800 the bow and arrow their bow and arrow and the axe their axe and so forth. 177 00:34:03.800 --> 00:34:08.920 And when they hunted down a buffalo, if I had hunted him down, then of course it was 178 00:34:08.920 --> 00:34:19.800 was my buffalo, but property in land is a relatively new invention so to speak and the 179 00:34:19.800 --> 00:34:28.840 explanation is land all of a sudden is perceived to be scarce and as soon as it becomes to 180 00:34:28.840 --> 00:34:41.760 be perceived as scarce, there will be attempts made by people to fence pieces off from other 181 00:34:41.760 --> 00:34:56.760 pieces, to mark places off from other places and claim them as mine or yours. 182 00:34:56.760 --> 00:35:20.760 The places where agriculture starts are naturally those places that have by nature, so to speak, an abundance of suitable plants. 183 00:35:20.760 --> 00:35:39.760 That is where you have wild corn and wild wheat and white, wild rye and so forth, people settle then there and then begin to cultivate that, breed better products. 184 00:35:39.760 --> 00:36:07.760 and those happen to be the places that we describe as the Fertile Crescent that is what is Iraq and Syria and those places nowadays on the one hand and on the other hand China that is places that were located close to 185 00:36:07.760 --> 00:36:20.920 to reverse and then later on of course also Egypt. 186 00:36:20.920 --> 00:36:35.040 Again we might want to take a look at the next chart that I have here that deals on 187 00:36:35.040 --> 00:36:51.920 on the one hand was examples of domesticated plants and animals by the date of earliest 188 00:36:51.920 --> 00:37:01.160 Domestication and by region. 189 00:37:01.160 --> 00:37:10.060 So again, this begins, so to speak, at about 8,000 before Christ. 190 00:37:10.060 --> 00:37:18.120 The only animal that had been domesticated before was the dog, which you find on the 191 00:37:18.120 --> 00:37:30.680 The opposite page. Dogs, of course, had been already of some use for hunters and gatherers. 192 00:37:30.680 --> 00:37:42.280 All the other animals are typical animals that are useful only in agricultural societies 193 00:37:42.280 --> 00:37:56.680 and not so much useful if you lead hunter and gatherer life existences. 194 00:37:56.680 --> 00:38:11.400 Again, the thing that I would like to make you aware of here is the remarkable observation 195 00:38:11.400 --> 00:38:23.000 that there existed basically no large-scale domesticated animals on the American continent 196 00:38:23.000 --> 00:38:39.760 except for the llama which is not exactly comparable in its versatility to horses and 197 00:38:39.760 --> 00:38:42.920 Cows and those things. 198 00:38:42.920 --> 00:38:51.360 There exists some explanations that Mr. Diamond proposes, which don't sound too plausible 199 00:38:51.360 --> 00:38:53.480 to me. 200 00:38:53.480 --> 00:38:59.380 He is some sort of environmentalist. 201 00:38:59.380 --> 00:39:07.820 He explains, for instance, the fact that there are no domesticated animals, large-scale animals 202 00:39:07.820 --> 00:39:14.940 on the American continent with the fact that it points out that initially there existed 203 00:39:14.940 --> 00:39:22.460 all the animals on the American continent that existed in Asia and Europe also. 204 00:39:22.460 --> 00:39:29.700 But on the American continent overhunting took place. 205 00:39:29.700 --> 00:39:33.100 And then you ask, of course, why did overhunting take place? 206 00:39:33.100 --> 00:39:39.140 Why did they wipe out all of these animals and did not recognize in time, so to speak, 207 00:39:39.140 --> 00:39:46.240 the value of some of them, the potential to be domesticated and so forth, as compared 208 00:39:46.240 --> 00:39:51.300 to what people did in Eurasia. 209 00:39:51.300 --> 00:40:01.700 And his explanation is that people arrived in America at a later date than in Asia and 210 00:40:01.700 --> 00:40:11.140 in Europe, and at that date the weapons technology was already further developed, so the killing 211 00:40:11.140 --> 00:40:22.820 potential was greater for those people active on the American continent, such that the extinction 212 00:40:22.820 --> 00:40:31.580 of Animals resulted there and did not result in Eurasia. 213 00:40:31.580 --> 00:40:37.380 Again, there exists, of course, also other explanations 214 00:40:37.380 --> 00:40:45.900 for this to which I will come at some future lecture that 215 00:40:45.900 --> 00:40:48.100 might have also something to do, of course, 216 00:40:48.100 --> 00:40:55.580 was a lack of foresight, that there was more foresight among some people in Eurasia and 217 00:40:55.580 --> 00:41:05.660 less foresight in America to prevent this sort of environmental catastrophe, as we might 218 00:41:05.660 --> 00:41:13.620 call it, from occurring. 219 00:41:13.620 --> 00:41:30.620 Now, agricultural life allows, of course, a far greater density of the population than hunter-gatherer existences. 220 00:41:30.620 --> 00:41:41.620 As a matter of fact, it is estimated that 10 to 100 times as many people can live on the same piece of land 221 00:41:41.620 --> 00:41:54.620 And if they engage in agriculture, then if they would engage in hunting and gathering activities. 222 00:41:54.620 --> 00:42:08.620 And we also recognize that as soon as you have settled down, 223 00:42:08.620 --> 00:42:17.020 build agricultural communities for the first time it becomes possible that capital can be accumulated. 224 00:42:18.220 --> 00:42:24.780 Imagine hunters and gatherers who just schlep around from place to place. There is only so many 225 00:42:24.780 --> 00:42:33.900 things that you can take with you. After all, you have to carry all of this and most of the stuff 226 00:42:33.900 --> 00:43:02.900 Now that you settle, of course, you can establish storages, you can accumulate things for bad seasons, and you can feed not only larger numbers, you can also turn your activity from one type of farming to another. 227 00:43:02.900 --> 00:43:14.900 from farming to other types of farming, from growing one type of cereal to growing other types of cereal and so forth. 228 00:43:14.900 --> 00:43:29.900 Initially, the way anthropologists describe or compare the life of the hunters and gatherers with the life of the settlers, the agricultural settled people, 229 00:43:29.900 --> 00:43:36.900 They point out that the life of hunters and gatherers was in a way easier, nicer. 230 00:43:36.900 --> 00:43:44.900 They spent only a few hours a day just hunting away and then they were lazing around. 231 00:43:44.900 --> 00:43:51.900 Whereas the agricultural people worked for long periods of time, 232 00:43:51.900 --> 00:44:01.700 time, especially since this whole thing started, so to speak, in the Middle East, with comparatively 233 00:44:01.700 --> 00:44:04.760 nice weather all year round. 234 00:44:04.760 --> 00:44:13.900 You could work also all year around, whereas hunters and gatherers had entire seasons off. 235 00:44:13.900 --> 00:44:35.900 So anthropologists report, for instance, that the hunters and gatherers frequently laughed at the stupid agricultural settlers there, that they worked so hard and they themselves had such a nice and lazy life. 236 00:44:35.900 --> 00:44:59.900 What is not true, however, which you find in some books reported, that it was that these hunter-gatherer societies turned out to be militarily, so to speak, superior over agricultural societies and regularly raided them. 237 00:44:59.900 --> 00:45:08.900 And if you think about it, while this is of course possible, there are compelling reasons why that should not be the case. 238 00:45:08.900 --> 00:45:20.900 That is why agricultural societies should have been, even in this department, that is defending themselves superior over hunter-gatherer societies, 239 00:45:20.900 --> 00:45:40.900 and other societies simply because they engage in capital accumulation, they are denser populations, they have far more men, and in conflicts, typically it was not the hunter-gatherer societies that beat the agricultural societies, but vice versa. 240 00:45:40.900 --> 00:45:50.900 Because of this then, let me just say something about the population size again. 241 00:45:50.900 --> 00:46:06.700 So with the Neolithic Revolution, so from 10 to 12,000 years ago, the population doubles 242 00:46:06.700 --> 00:46:18.160 every 1,300 years, roughly, as compared with 13,000 years prior to that. 243 00:46:18.160 --> 00:46:25.120 So that we have, for instance, again these are all ballpark figures, at some later lecture 244 00:46:25.120 --> 00:46:31.000 I will also give you a table with some sort of population estimates. 245 00:46:31.000 --> 00:46:40.520 So the estimation is that maybe 10,000 years ago we had 5 million people at the beginning 246 00:46:40.520 --> 00:46:51.320 of the Neolithic Revolution, and in the year one, the numbers that are given go from 170 247 00:46:51.320 --> 00:46:54.360 million to 400 million. 248 00:46:54.360 --> 00:47:05.400 So if you take an average of these estimates, then you come up with this rough idea of 1,300 249 00:47:05.400 --> 00:47:11.240 for the years per doubling of the population. 250 00:47:11.240 --> 00:47:20.040 Now this superiority of agricultural societies over hunter-gathering societies is then responsible 251 00:47:20.040 --> 00:47:26.480 for the gradual spreading of these societies. 252 00:47:26.480 --> 00:47:28.760 This did not start at every place. 253 00:47:28.760 --> 00:47:30.280 It started at a few places. 254 00:47:30.280 --> 00:47:45.280 As I said, fertile crescent, then some places in China, and gradually the farmers, so to speak, take over more and more land. 255 00:47:45.280 --> 00:47:52.280 The hunter-gatherers are first transformed into herders. 256 00:47:52.280 --> 00:47:57.280 They don't roam around anymore, they have no deal with tamed animals, 257 00:47:57.280 --> 00:48:16.980 But the tamed animals are of course now on the outskirts and even the herders gradually lose more and more land to the ever expanding farming population. 258 00:48:16.980 --> 00:48:27.980 Again, if you just look at the current world, hunters and gatherers practically exist no more at all, except at the very fringes of the globe. 259 00:48:27.980 --> 00:48:40.980 And even herders exist only at very small places, again, far removed, whatever, in Siberia, in places of that kind. 260 00:48:40.980 --> 00:48:56.980 So the superior civilization, if we want to use this term, the agricultural civilization gradually expands outward. 261 00:48:56.980 --> 00:49:20.340 The time, for instance, you can gather that from one of these tables also where, when 262 00:49:20.340 --> 00:49:28.340 and various plans and so forth appear in various regions. 263 00:49:28.340 --> 00:49:37.540 The time takes about 5,000 years for agriculture 264 00:49:37.540 --> 00:49:40.620 to spread from the fertile crescent 265 00:49:40.620 --> 00:49:45.100 to reach a place like England. 266 00:49:45.100 --> 00:49:49.580 So that would be, if I remember correctly, 267 00:49:49.580 --> 00:49:59.700 That would be an expansion of something like slightly more than one kilometer per year, 268 00:49:59.700 --> 00:50:09.700 which is added, so to speak, to an agriculturally used territory and taken away from hunter-gatherer 269 00:50:09.700 --> 00:50:15.540 territories. 270 00:50:15.540 --> 00:50:23.780 The division of labor now intensifies, of course, quite a bit. 271 00:50:23.780 --> 00:50:31.820 There are not just three, four different types of occupation that you can do, small villages 272 00:50:31.820 --> 00:50:50.100 coming into existence, craftsmen who are specialized in these tasks evolve, far more specialization. 273 00:50:50.100 --> 00:50:57.580 There is also a certain amount of interregional trade now developing, whereas between the 274 00:50:57.580 --> 00:51:18.580 The hunter-gatherer societies, as I said, there was practically no trading going on whatsoever and, of course, innovations now spread in some sort of regular and permanent way. 275 00:51:18.580 --> 00:51:24.580 Again, hunter-gatherer societies living, so to speak, side by side. 276 00:51:24.580 --> 00:51:36.580 It happens, but it happens more or less by accident that one group picks up a new technique that has been developed by another one. 277 00:51:36.580 --> 00:51:47.580 Now, in agricultural societies, people living next door to each other are being integrated to a certain extent through division of labor. 278 00:51:47.580 --> 00:52:09.580 Labor. Of course, the diffusion of knowledge also takes place. It is something that is developed in one place, will eventually arrive at some other place and will be imitated there if it happens to be useful at those places. 279 00:52:09.580 --> 00:52:29.580 The source of direction is always from the center of civilization, which is further crescent in the river valleys in China, to the periphery where the wild people still live. 280 00:52:29.580 --> 00:52:42.580 And no longer does it take place that the division of labor breaks down as easily, that something is simply forgotten. 281 00:52:42.580 --> 00:52:51.580 As long as contact remains in existence, and it does remain in existence, and the population size increases, 282 00:52:51.580 --> 00:53:03.580 The specialization progresses and innovations are transported from place to place. 283 00:53:03.580 --> 00:53:20.580 And what I pointed out before, now with agriculture we see also a tendency that this previous tendency of languages 284 00:53:20.580 --> 00:53:29.580 Languages to break up into larger and larger numbers of different languages does come to a certain halt. 285 00:53:29.580 --> 00:53:35.580 There is no more communication between them. 286 00:53:35.580 --> 00:53:41.580 There is a greater advantage to speak languages that are spoken by many people 287 00:53:41.580 --> 00:53:53.580 and also a tendency, so to speak, for the first time to learn the languages of neighboring regions 288 00:53:53.580 --> 00:54:08.580 because you trade and associate with them to a certain extent, which you did not do during the previous phase of mankind. 289 00:54:11.580 --> 00:54:39.580 Let me end this lecture by providing you with two quotes from Mises, the first one a quote, the full implication of which will only become clear in the next lecture. 290 00:54:39.580 --> 00:54:57.580 I think Mises tries to explain why there is, so to speak, an inherent tendency in human development of extending the division of labor, 291 00:54:57.580 --> 00:55:23.580 of having more and more people participate in division of labor and to intensify division of labor that is to specialize more and more and dedicate your entire time to specific tasks rather than do one hour this and another hour this and an hour this. 292 00:55:23.580 --> 00:55:38.580 And the second quote, which again leads over to the first lecture of tomorrow morning, 293 00:55:38.580 --> 00:55:51.580 a quote where he describes, so to speak, the inherent limitations that purely agricultural societies have, 294 00:55:51.580 --> 00:56:08.580 which lets us expect, so to speak, that a new invention has to be made again, just as we invented agriculture to solve the problem of the increasing scarcity of land. 295 00:56:08.580 --> 00:56:37.580 We have to make a new, mankind has to come up with another, has to solve another challenge that is inherent in purely agricultural societies that is to develop industrial societies with cities in order to deal with the fact that of course even in agricultural societies we will reach eventually the point again when 296 00:56:37.580 --> 00:56:55.580 The land cannot support steadily growing populations and a new institution allowing us to live on far denser, far smaller territories comes into being. 297 00:56:55.580 --> 00:57:08.580 The first quote, as I said, dealing with the cause, what he says, the cause of social evolution. 298 00:57:08.580 --> 00:57:20.580 There he says, the simplest way to depict the evolution of society is to show the distinction between two evolutionary tendencies 299 00:57:20.580 --> 00:57:27.580 which are related to each other in the same way as intention and extension. 300 00:57:27.580 --> 00:57:36.580 Society develops subjectively and objectively, subjectively by enlarging its membership. 301 00:57:36.580 --> 00:57:45.580 We have seen how that takes place reaching already several million people 302 00:57:45.580 --> 00:57:55.580 at the beginning of the Neolithic Revolution and then shooting up from there in a more rapid rate. 303 00:57:55.580 --> 00:58:06.580 So subjectively by enlarging its membership and objectively by enlarging the aims of its activities. 304 00:58:06.580 --> 00:58:12.580 Far more activities become possible in an agricultural society. 305 00:58:12.580 --> 00:58:19.900 We build huts, we build tools for which there was no need before, we build storage facilities 306 00:58:19.900 --> 00:58:26.420 and so forth, enlarging the aims of human activities. 307 00:58:26.420 --> 00:58:34.340 Originally confined to the narrowest circles of people, to immediate neighbors, the division 308 00:58:34.340 --> 00:58:43.300 of Labor gradually becomes more general until eventually it includes all mankind. 309 00:58:43.300 --> 00:58:52.140 This process, still far from complete and never at any point in history completed, is 310 00:58:52.140 --> 00:58:53.540 finite. 311 00:58:53.540 --> 00:59:00.360 We can of course imagine, so to speak, a point when this process has reached an end. 312 00:59:00.360 --> 00:59:09.360 When all men on earth form a unitary system of division of labor, it will have reached its goal. 313 00:59:09.360 --> 00:59:18.360 Side by side with this extension of the social bonds goes a process of intensification. 314 00:59:18.360 --> 00:59:28.360 Social action embraces more and more aims and the area in which the individual provides for his own consumption 315 00:59:28.360 --> 00:59:43.360 becomes constantly narrower. We need not pause at this stage to ask whether this process will eventually result in the specialization of all productive activity. 316 00:59:43.360 --> 00:59:51.360 But again, the tendency is clearly in this direction. 317 00:59:51.360 --> 01:00:03.360 There's an interesting quote on what I might call the limitations of purely agricultural societies. 318 01:00:03.360 --> 01:00:13.360 There he says, we may depict conditions of a society of agriculturalists in which every member 319 01:00:13.360 --> 01:00:20.620 Remember tilts a piece of land large enough to provide himself and his family with the 320 01:00:20.620 --> 01:00:24.720 indispensable necessities of life. 321 01:00:24.720 --> 01:00:31.580 We may include in such a picture the existence of a few specialists, artisans like Smiths 322 01:00:31.580 --> 01:00:35.120 and professional men like doctors. 323 01:00:35.120 --> 01:00:41.780 We may even go further and assume that some men do not own a farm but work as laborers 324 01:00:41.780 --> 01:00:44.700 on Other People's Farms. 325 01:00:44.700 --> 01:00:50.960 The employer remunerates them for their help and takes care of them when sickness or old 326 01:00:50.960 --> 01:00:53.900 age disables him. 327 01:00:53.900 --> 01:01:01.540 This scheme of an ideal society was at the bottom of many utopian plans. 328 01:01:01.540 --> 01:01:07.420 It was by and large realized for some time in some communities. 329 01:01:07.420 --> 01:01:14.220 The nearest approach to its realization was probably the commonwealth which the Jesuit 330 01:01:14.220 --> 01:01:20.220 Padres established in the country which is today Paraguay. 331 01:01:20.220 --> 01:01:28.100 There is, however, no need to examine the merits of such a system of social organization. 332 01:01:28.100 --> 01:01:31.420 Historical evolution burst it asunder. 333 01:01:31.420 --> 01:01:39.920 This frame was too narrow for the number of people who are living today on the Earth's surface. 334 01:01:39.920 --> 01:01:46.920 The inherent weakness of such a society is that the increase in population must result 335 01:01:46.920 --> 01:01:49.760 in progressive poverty. 336 01:01:49.760 --> 01:01:57.520 If the estate of a deceased farmer is divided among its children, the holdings finally become 337 01:01:57.520 --> 01:02:03.520 have become so small that they can no longer provide sufficient sustenance for a family. 338 01:02:03.520 --> 01:02:09.520 Everybody is a landowner, but everybody is extremely poor. 339 01:02:09.520 --> 01:02:14.520 Conditions as they prevailed in large areas of China 340 01:02:14.520 --> 01:02:21.520 provide a sad illustration of the misery of the tillers of small parcels. 341 01:02:21.520 --> 01:02:29.520 The alternative to this outcome is the emergence of a huge mass of landless proletarians. 342 01:02:29.520 --> 01:02:36.520 Then a wide gap separates the disinherited paupers from the fortunate farmers. 343 01:02:36.520 --> 01:02:44.520 They are a class of pariahs whose very existence presents society with an insoluble problem. 344 01:02:44.520 --> 01:02:53.520 They search in vain for a livelihood. Society has no use for them. They are destitute. 345 01:02:53.520 --> 01:03:05.520 And here then, a solution to another problem has to be developed, and that is the solution of industrial capitalism. 346 01:03:05.520 --> 01:03:20.520 and Capitalism, the development of towns, money, which allows another push in the growth of mankind and in the specialization of tasks. 347 01:03:20.520 --> 01:03:24.520 And I will talk about that tomorrow. Thank you. 348 01:03:24.520 --> 01:03:36.520 Any questions? 349 01:03:36.520 --> 01:03:48.520 Is this the lecture where you can discuss private property as the ownership of land and how much land a party should own? 350 01:03:48.520 --> 01:04:15.520 I will come back to this subject at several points again, but yes, of course, but here you immediately realize that of course if we use this idea that you acquire property in things that you have brought under your own control, 351 01:04:15.520 --> 01:04:22.520 The initial size of farm plots must have been very moderate. 352 01:04:22.520 --> 01:04:35.520 At this time we have no means of transportation that would allow us to just plough huge amounts of land. 353 01:04:35.520 --> 01:04:43.520 So the parcels that people bring under their active control are comparatively small. 354 01:04:43.520 --> 01:04:58.520 You do have, however, in those societies already a certain stratification, that is, there will be wealthier farmers and less wealthy farmers. 355 01:04:58.520 --> 01:05:06.520 There will be some farmers who will be able to buy up the farmland of someone else. 356 01:05:06.520 --> 01:05:31.520 So you can already have significant differences in the size of land holdings in such societies, but you could not have anything like Mises describes it at some point during the Roman Empire that three or four people owned all of Africa. 357 01:05:31.520 --> 01:05:50.520 That you can only have with the help of a state, but not by personally or with the help of your employees taking possession, doing something to the land, fertilizing it, cultivating it, and so forth. 358 01:05:50.520 --> 01:06:20.520 Any idea I have had is unsuccessful in that, as I see the desirable properties, being in contention, jealousies, that it entails in the subjective or individual self-defense, and the aligning themselves with the community, wherein jointly they can, and to proceed it on, I end up with a war, despite our, what of our chief objective being to keep those 359 01:06:20.520 --> 01:06:37.520 First of all, yes, it is true that these agricultural societies, as I pointed out, have better defense capabilities because they are closer together. 360 01:06:37.520 --> 01:06:51.520 They are adjoined and they can accumulate capital. In this regard they have an advantage over these roaming hunters and gatherers. 361 01:06:51.520 --> 01:06:57.520 And the second point, yes, of course there is competition for the best land. 362 01:06:57.520 --> 01:07:08.520 But we have to keep in mind there also that what is the best land and the best location is something that does change. 363 01:07:08.520 --> 01:07:20.520 I recall the Sahara at one point in time was a piece of land that could be agriculturally used and then became entirely useless. 364 01:07:20.520 --> 01:07:28.520 Regions that could not be used at all can be used as soon as we have air conditioning. 365 01:07:28.520 --> 01:07:48.520 That is, technological advances, changes in the climate can make certain things attractive that were formerly unattractive and vice versa. 366 01:07:48.520 --> 01:08:01.520 And we can even go a step further, we can say, yes, there is of course also a certain amount of entrepreneurial talent involved in picking out right places. 367 01:08:01.520 --> 01:08:14.520 That is, at least nowadays, in the thousands of years, it was of course far more difficult because we had no idea of what the world offered, so to speak. 368 01:08:14.520 --> 01:08:20.520 But now that we know basically everything, how it looks there and how it looks here, 369 01:08:20.520 --> 01:08:24.520 now of course it is all partly entrepreneurial talent to figure out, 370 01:08:24.520 --> 01:08:30.520 hey, this is a promising piece of land and I should get this one. 371 01:08:30.520 --> 01:08:34.520 And we can even say, goes as far as to say, 372 01:08:34.520 --> 01:08:40.520 then smarter people will tend to settle at better places 373 01:08:40.520 --> 01:08:50.520 The loser in the competition is encouraged to move from Africa to Australia, isn't he? 374 01:09:10.520 --> 01:09:17.120 at the beginning they could roll more all over I mean that place where we have now 375 01:09:17.120 --> 01:09:25.560 CUN and Monaco and beautiful places and San Diego and who knows what it was 376 01:09:25.560 --> 01:09:31.640 available to everyone but we cannot imagine that hunter-gatherers would be 377 01:09:31.640 --> 01:09:39.560 able to hold on to places like this under current conditions obviously yeah 378 01:09:39.560 --> 01:09:52.560 I'm just curious about the idea that hunter-gatherers basically went into an agricultural region and took over a state or a ruling group. Where did that idea originate? 379 01:10:09.560 --> 01:10:22.560 That's the statement. Their view is, yeah, they are better in the short run, of course, they are better in the handling of arms. 380 01:10:22.560 --> 01:10:27.560 That's what they have done. They have arrows and bows and this sort of stuff. 381 01:10:27.560 --> 01:10:32.560 Is there any empirical evidence? 382 01:10:32.560 --> 01:10:40.560 Empirical evidence in this entire period is very sparse. 383 01:10:40.560 --> 01:10:48.560 So I have heard both positions argued. 384 01:10:48.560 --> 01:10:56.560 I have persuaded myself to adopt the one that I presented here based more on theoretical reasons. 385 01:10:56.560 --> 01:11:12.560 After all, they will be wealthier. After all, they can engage in capital accumulation. After all, they will, after a short period of time, of course, have people who are better as specialist warriors than the hunters and gatherers are. 386 01:11:12.560 --> 01:11:23.560 Without saying that that other thing cannot happen, obviously, if you do a surprise attack and loot some farming community, that can happen. 387 01:11:23.560 --> 01:11:30.560 But if you think, but would that be, so to speak, over and over possible? Is that the dominant pattern? 388 01:11:30.560 --> 01:11:35.560 And there I would say that all theoretical reasons speak against that. 389 01:11:41.560 --> 01:11:46.560 Yeah, but I think, but the same reasoning does apply to the herders as well. 390 01:11:46.560 --> 01:12:14.560 Yes, but they're agriculturists. I mean, they're not completely settled, but they do not have a possibility to accumulate capital to the same extent as settled communities have. 391 01:12:14.560 --> 01:12:29.560 What? Yeah, but the livestock is not capital that is relevant when it comes to defending yourself. 392 01:12:29.560 --> 01:12:42.560 It's like you cannot build fortifications and things like this. Yes, yeah, you can, right, in some movies you can just run your buffaloes through 393 01:12:42.560 --> 01:12:52.640 but again you see like if you have villages you can build walls the 394 01:12:52.640 --> 01:12:59.200 herders would not have walls they just so in this in this sense I think the same 395 01:12:59.200 --> 01:13:04.120 type of reasoning not to the same extent as hunter-gatherers applies to them as 396 01:13:04.120 --> 01:13:09.640 well so I consider that to be also the less likely scenario even even though 397 01:13:09.640 --> 01:13:32.640 The fact is probably that those two types of agriculture just didn't exist separately, just cultivation and just herding, that they probably overlapped. Some cultures may have been more herding and some may have been more killing. 398 01:13:39.640 --> 01:13:55.640 more and more to the fringes, you have that in the United States also, you have the fights between the farmers and the herders, and of course the herders must lose this fight, I mean there's no question about it. 399 01:13:55.640 --> 01:14:18.640 So I think what we saw in the United States, the American continent being, so to speak, one of the least developed of the continents, things taking place here with the delay of a few thousand years as compared to what we more advanced Europeans had. 400 01:14:18.640 --> 01:14:33.640 Carl Menner made beans, though, on their cattle drives, so, I mean, they did rely on killing, just as much as the farmers. They had some big people, too. They weren't stopped by trucks. 401 01:14:33.640 --> 01:14:35.640 They bought their beans. 402 01:14:35.640 --> 01:14:47.640 The herds! The herds were just for survival. I mean, they didn't raise up extra stock to go trade. 403 01:14:47.640 --> 01:14:57.400 The herders have the problem that they have no clear-cut ownership in land concept yet. 404 01:14:57.400 --> 01:14:59.240 It develops in them. 405 01:14:59.240 --> 01:15:00.240 You can see it. 406 01:15:00.240 --> 01:15:06.840 They are closer to it than the hunters and gatherers, but it is precisely that you have 407 01:15:06.840 --> 01:15:14.900 fights among different herders because your sheep graze on what other people consider 408 01:15:14.900 --> 01:15:41.900 You had mentioned in the book Guns, Germs and Steel that diamond had theorized that at one time various animals that were available in Europe and so forth were available again in America. 409 01:15:44.900 --> 01:15:50.900 That they had, the existing populations had exterminated them? 410 01:15:50.900 --> 01:15:52.900 Yes, that's what he claims. 411 01:15:52.900 --> 01:16:01.900 The logic I keep thinking of is while they were exterminating the last few pigs and cows and whatever, did they fail to notice the tens of millions of buffaloes running by them? 412 01:16:01.900 --> 01:16:08.900 No, the buffaloes didn't exist. The buffaloes were also, they also came back afterwards, I guess. 413 01:16:08.900 --> 01:16:28.900 I assume the buffalos can be domesticated, but we have water buffalos and that sort of stuff, right? 414 01:16:28.900 --> 01:16:44.900 The American bison is bison, and they're harder to domesticate. And that was an animal species that a lot of the American animals were just temperamental. 415 01:16:44.900 --> 01:16:54.900 I'm not sure I buy that either, but even now when people keep bison in enclosures, they have to use different kinds of fencing, you know, they're just not... 416 01:16:54.900 --> 01:16:55.900 They're just big. 417 01:16:55.900 --> 01:16:58.900 Now whether or not they are domesticable is... 418 01:17:14.900 --> 01:17:42.900 that he does claim. Another explanation that doesn't work in his case is he points out, for instance, you see that on that table too, that there are very few domesticated plants in Africa and also very few domesticated animals in Africa. 419 01:17:42.900 --> 01:17:51.100 and he has a list of domesticatable plants and domesticatable animals and 420 01:17:51.100 --> 01:17:59.060 then shows that it doesn't happen in Africa but his general explanation is 421 01:17:59.060 --> 01:18:05.140 always to say there are some regions there are less domesticatable plants and 422 01:18:05.140 --> 01:18:10.700 animals and because of that they lack development but in the African case it 423 01:18:10.700 --> 01:18:20.700 But it would not work at all, because they have just as many as they had on other continents, and the development is basically zero. 424 01:18:20.700 --> 01:18:27.700 But in any case, it does not support at all his environmentalist explanation. 425 01:18:27.700 --> 01:18:37.700 There are obviously easy explanations to come up with that would be able to explain this, but he doesn't touch those explanations. 426 01:18:37.700 --> 01:18:57.700 Just as I should point out, also this book by Cavalli-Sforza, he of course also rejects any type of, yeah, how can I say, ethnic IQ explanations or something like this in his preface, in the postscript to the book. 427 01:18:57.700 --> 01:19:07.700 There is no difference. They are all the same. But the entire book is a book that explains how different they actually are. 428 01:19:07.700 --> 01:19:15.700 So I think that Cavalli-Sforza wrote the preface and the postscript after he was hired at Stanford. 429 01:19:15.700 --> 01:19:19.700 And then he realized at Stanford certain things you could not say. 430 01:19:19.700 --> 01:19:35.700 So in order to pacify his colleagues, he wrote this politically correct preface and postscript, hoping that, like most academics, nobody would read the middle, and they would be all happy this way. 431 01:19:35.700 --> 01:20:00.700 I didn't read the diamond book or the word, but it seems to me that this thesis was more that there was a different density of domesticable species in the thorough presence of the Narwhal, so that in the entirety of Africa there may have been 15 domesticable species, and in the small thorough presence area there were 15 domesticable species. 432 01:20:00.700 --> 01:20:11.700 and so that the idea of domestication couldn't easily develop unless you had a certain concentration of several domesticable species. 433 01:20:16.700 --> 01:20:22.700 One was looking at the continent and one was looking at a small area and I thought that that was his major point, 434 01:20:22.700 --> 01:20:29.700 that you had all these species concentrated in a small area whereas in other areas you had a similar number of species 435 01:20:29.700 --> 01:20:39.700 No, he has broad categories also. He says simply Eurasia, which is obviously also a very broad category. 436 01:20:39.700 --> 01:20:55.700 Right, but I, you know, more in the text than just the table, it seems like he was talking a lot from what I understood was that there, he felt like there was a different density of mathematical species in that one area and that's what gave it the advantage. 437 01:20:55.700 --> 01:21:03.700 You know, we don't have to decide this question now. 438 01:21:03.700 --> 01:21:10.700 I also would not feel competent enough to decide questions such as this. 439 01:21:10.700 --> 01:21:19.700 I just want to make you aware of the fact that Mr. Diamond has a clear-cut agenda in his book 440 01:21:19.700 --> 01:21:26.420 book, an agenda that is contradicted at many places in his own book, which he does not 441 01:21:26.420 --> 01:21:30.100 seem to be aware of. 442 01:21:30.100 --> 01:21:35.500 That doesn't make the book any less enjoyable. 443 01:21:35.500 --> 01:21:41.340 I thought that it's a very interesting book, just as I think that Cavalli's Forza book 444 01:21:41.340 --> 01:21:43.380 is a very enjoyable book. 445 01:21:43.380 --> 01:21:46.260 I don't agree with everything that he says. 446 01:21:46.260 --> 01:21:54.800 In those areas where I feel competent to make judgment myself, I think they make clear mistakes. 447 01:21:54.800 --> 01:21:59.820 In other areas, I feel completely incompetent when it comes to genetic differences and that 448 01:21:59.820 --> 01:22:01.220 sort of stuff. 449 01:22:01.220 --> 01:22:09.420 That's their specialty and what I do here is just use these things as some sort of illustration. 450 01:22:09.420 --> 01:22:15.940 My purpose is an entirely different purpose as that from Cavalli-Sforza or Jared Diamond. 451 01:22:15.940 --> 01:22:21.940 I, in many ways, I have far more ambitious goals than these people do. 452 01:22:21.940 --> 01:22:24.940 No, yeah, of course you will see that. 453 01:22:29.940 --> 01:22:33.940 Okay, I think let's let that be enough for today.