Bill Gates reviews Jared Diamond's book "The World Until Yesterday"

Diamond starts with the premise that human beings were hunter-gatherers for millions of years, and only settled down when we began farming about 10,000 years ago. So most of our genetic selection has been done in a hunter-gatherer environment. He argues that we can learn a lot by studying hunter-gatherer societies in places like New Guinea, where he has spent much of his career. (He uses the term New Guinea to refer to the island that is divided between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.)

He describes several areas in particular, like raising children, dealing with the elderly, and eating well. He doesn’t romanticize these societies, as I thought he might, or make some grand pronouncement that they all do these things better than we do. He just wants to find the best practices and share them.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find much deep wisdom in the lessons that Diamond documents. But I found the book fascinating anyway.

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Book: The World Until Yesterday

Related previous posts:

Jared Diamond: Best Practices for Raising Kids? Look to Hunter-Gatherers

"The Worst Mistake In The History Of The Human Race" – 1987 article by Jared Diamond