The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee

by Jared Diamond

  Domestication specifically of the horse, and its importance, are the subjects of books by Frank G. Row, The Indian and the Horse (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1955); Robin Law, The Horse in West African History (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1980); and Matthew J. Kust, Man and Horse in History (Plutarch Press, Alexandria, Virginia, 1983). The development of wheeled vehicles, including war chariots, is treated in books by M. A. Littauer and J. H. Crouwel, Wheeled Vehicles and Ridden Animals in the Ancient Near East (Brill, Leiden, 1979) and by Stuart Piggott, The Earliest Wheeled Transport (Thames and Hudson, London, 1983). Edward Shaughnessy describes the arrival of the horse and chariot in China in ‘Historical perspectives on the introduction of the chariot into China’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 48, pp. 189–237 (1988).

  For general accounts of plant domestication, see Kent V. Flannery, ‘The origins of agriculture’, Annual Review of Anthropology 2, pp. 271–310 (1973); Charles B. Heiser, Jnr, Seed to Civilization, 2nd edition (Freeman, San Francisco, 1981), and Of Plants and Peoples (University of Oklahoma Press, Norton, 1985); David Rindos, The Origins of Agriculture: an Evolutionary Perspective (Academic Press, New York, 1984); and Hugh H. Iltis, ‘Maize evolution and agricultural origins’, pp. 195–213 in Grass Systematics and Evolution, edited by T.R. Soderstrom et al (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC, 1987). This and other papers by Iltis are a stimulating source of ideas about the differing ease of cereal domestication in the Old and New World.

  Plant domestication specifically in the Old World is treated by Jane Renfrew, Palaeoethnobotany (Columbia University Press, New York, 1973), and by Daniel Zohary and Maria Hopf, Domestication of Plants in the Old World (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988). Corresponding accounts for the New World include Richard S. MacNeish, The food-gathering and incipient agricultural stage of prehistoric Middle America’, pp. 413–26 in the Handbook of Middle American Indians, edited by Robert Wauchope and Robert C. West, Vol. I: Natural Environment and Early Cultures (University of Texas Press, Austin, 1964); P.C. Mangelsdorf et al, ‘Origins of agriculture in Middle America’, pp. 427–45 in the book by Wauchope and West; D. Ugent, ‘The potato’, Science 170, pp. 1161–66 (1970); C.B. Heiser, Jnr, ‘Origins of some cultivated New World plants’, Annual Reviews of Ecology and Systematics 10, pp. 309–26 (1979); H.H. Iltis, ‘From teosinte to maize: the catastrophic sexual dismutation’, Science 222, pp. 886–94 (1983); William F. Keegan, Emergent Horticultural Economies of the Eastern Woodlands (Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, 1987); and B.D. Smith, ‘Origins of agriculture in eastern North America’, Science 246, pp. 1566–71 (1989). Three pioneering books point out the asymmetrical intercontinental spread of diseases, pests, and weeds: William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (Anchor Press, Garden City, New York, 1976); and Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (Greenwood Press, Westport, 1972), and Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986).

  Chapter 15: Horses, Hittites, and History

  Two stimulating, knowledgeable recent books summarizing the Indo-European problem are by Colin Renfrew, Archaeology and Language (Jonathan Cape, London, 1987), and J.P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans (Thames and Hudson, London, 1989). For the reasons explained in my chapter, I agree with Mallory’s conclusions, and disagree with Renfrew’s, concerning the approximate time and place of proto-Indo-European origins.

  An older but still useful comprehensive multi-authored book is by George Cardona et al, Indo-European and Indo-Europeans (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1970). A journal titled (what else?) The Journal of Indo-European Studies is the main outlet for technical publication in this field.

  The view that both Mallory and I find persuasive is supported in the writings of Marija Gimbutas, who is the author of four books in this field: The Balts (Praeger, New York, 1963), The Slavs (Thames and Hudson, London, 1971), The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe (Thames and Hudson, London, 1982), and The Language of the Goddess (Harper and Row, New York, 1989). Gimbutas also described her work in chapters in the book by Cardona et al cited above, in the books by Polomé and by Bernhard and Kandler-Pálsson cited below, and in the Journal of Indo-European Studies 1, pp. 1–20 and 163–214 (1973); 5, pp. 277–338 (1977); 8, pp. 273–315 (1980); and 13, pp. 185–201 (1985).

  Books or monographs dealing with early Indo-European peoples themselves are by Emile Benveniste, Indo-European Language and Society (Faber and Faber, London, 1973); Edgar Polomé, The Indo-Europeans in the Fourth and Third Millenia (Karoma, Ann Arbor, 1982); Wolfram Bernhard and Anneliese Kandler-Pálsson, Ethnogenese europäischer Völker (Fischer, Stuttgart, 1986); and Wolfram Nagel, ‘Indogermanen und Alter Orient: Rückblick und Ausblick auf den Stand des Indogermanen-problems’, Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft zu Berlin 119, pp. 157–213 (1987). Books on the languages themselves include those by Henrik Birnbaum and Jaan Puhvel, Ancient Indo-European Dialects (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1966); W.B. Lockwood, Indo-European Philology (Hutchinson, London, 1969); Norman Bird, The Distribution of Indo-European Root Morphemes (Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 1982); and Philip Baldi, An Introduction to the Indo-European Languages (Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, 1983). Paul Friedrich’s book Proto-Indo-European Trees (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1970) uses the evidence of tree names in an attempt to deduce the Indo-European homeland.

  W.P. Lehmann and L. Zgusta provide and discuss a sample of reconstructed proto-Indo-European in their chapter ‘Schleicher’s tale after a century’, pp. 455–66 in Studies in Diachronic, Synchronic, and Typological Linguistics, edited by Bela Brogyanyi (Benjamins, Amsterdam, 1979).

  The references to the domestication and importance of horses cited under Chapter Fourteen are also relevant to the role of horses in the Indo-European expansion. Papers specifically on this subject are by David Anthony, ‘The “Kurgan culture”, Indo-European origins and the domestication of the horse: a reconsideration’, Current Anthropology 27, pp. 291–313 (1986); and by David Anthony and Dorcas Brown, ‘The origins of horseback riding’, Antiquity 65, pp. 22–38 (1991).

  Chapter 16: In Black and White

  Three books providing general surveys of genocide are by Irving Horowitz, Genocide: State Power and Mass Murder (Transaction Books, New Brunswick, 1976); Leo Kuper, The Pity of it All (Gerald Duckworth, London, 1977); and Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the 20th Century (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1981). A gifted psychiatrist, Robert J. Lifton, has published studies of the psychological effects of genocide on its perpetrators and survivors, including Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (Random House, New York, 1967) and The Broken Connection (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1979).

  Books that describe the extermination of the Tasmanians and other native Australian groups include N.J.B. Plomley, Friendly Mission: The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson 1829–1834 (Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Hobart, 1966); C.D. Rowley, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society, Vol. I (Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1970); and Lyndall Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians (University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, 1981). Patricia Cobern’s letter indignantly denying that Australian whites exterminated the Tasmanians has been reprinted as an appendix to the book by J. Peter White and James F. O’Connell, A Prehistory of Australia, New Guinea, and Sahul (Academic Press, New York, 1982).

  Among the many books detailing the extermination of American Indians by white settlers are Wilcomb E. Washburn, ‘The moral and legal justification for dispossessing the Indians’, pp. 15–32 in Seventeenth Century America, edited by James Morton Smith (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1959); Alvin M Josephy, Jnr, The American Heritage Book of Indians (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1961); Howard Peckham and Charles Gibson, Attitudes of Colonial Powers Towards the American Indian (University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, 1969); Francis Jennings, The Invasion
of America: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1975); Wilcomb E. Washburn, The Indian in America (Harper and Row, New York, 1975); Arrell Morgan Gibson, The American Indian, Prehistory to the Present (Heath, Lexington, Massachusetts, 1980); and Wilbur H. Jacobs, Dispossessing the American Indian (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1985). The extermination of the Yahi Indians, and the survival of Ishi, are the subjects of Theodora Kroeber’s classic book Ishi in Two Worlds: A Biography of the Last Wild Indian in North America (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1961). The extermination of Brazil’s Indians is treated by Sheldon Davis, Victims of the Miracle (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977).

  Genocide under Stalin is described in books by Robert Conquest, including The Harvest of Sorrow (Oxford University Press, New York, 1986).

  Accounts of murder and mass murder of animals by other animals of the same species are given by E.O. Wilson, Sociobiology (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1975); Cynthia Moss, Portraits in the Wild, 2nd edition (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1982); and Jane Goodall, The Chimpanzees of Gombe (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1986).

  Chapter 17: The Golden Age that Never Was

  Extinction of animals in the Late Pleistocene and Early Recent era are described comprehensively in the book edited by Paul Martin and Richard Klein, Quaternary Extinctions (University of Arizonia Press, Tucson, 1984). For the history of deforestation, see John Perlin’s book A Forest Journey (Norton, New York, 1989).

  Comprehensive accounts of New Zealand’s plants, animals, geology, and climate will be found in a book edited by G. Kuschel, Biogeography and Ecology in New Zealand (Junk, V.T. Hague, 1975). New Zealand examples of extinction are summarized in chapters 32–34 of the book by Martin and Klein, cited above. Moas are the subject of a supplement to the New Zealand Journal of Ecology, Vol. XII (1989); see especially the articles by Richard Holdaway on pp. 11–25, and by Ian Atkinson and R.M. Greenwood on pp. 67–96. Other key articles relevant to moas are by G. Caughley, ‘The colonization of New Zealand by the Polynesians’, Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 18, pp. 245–70 (1988), and by A. Anderson, ‘Mechanics of overkill in the extinction of New Zealand moas’, Journal of Archaeological Science 16, pp. 137–151 (1989).

  Examples of extinction in Madagascar and Hawaii are described in Chapters 26 and 35 respectively of the book by Martin and Klein, cited above. The Henderson Island story is told by David Steadman and Storrs Olson, ‘Bird remains from an archaeological site on Henderson Island, South Pacific: man-caused extinctions on an “uninhabited” island’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 82, pp. 6191–95 (1985). See under suggested reading for Chapter Eighteen for accounts of species’ extinction in the Americas.

  The grisly end of Easter Island civilization is recounted by Patrick V. Kirch in his book The Evolution of the Polynesian Chiefdoms (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1984). Easter’s deforestation was reconstructed by J. Flenley, ‘Stratigraphic evidence of environmental change on Easter Island’, Asian Perspectives 22, pp. 33–40 (1979), and by J. Flenley and S. King, ‘Late Quaternary pollen records from Easter Island’, Nature 307, pp. 47–50 (1984).

  Some accounts of the rise and fall of Anasazi settlement at Chaco Canyon are J.L. Betancourt and T.R. Van Devender, ‘Holocene vegetation in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico’, Science 214, pp. 656–58 (1981); M.L. Samuels and J.L. Betancourt, ‘Modeling the long-term effects of fuelwood harvests on pinyon-juniper woodlands’, Environmental Management 6, pp. 505–15 (1982); J.L. Betancourt et al, ‘Prehistoric long-distance transport of construction beams, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico’, American Antiquity 51, pp. 370–75 (1986); Kendrick Frazier, People of Chaco: A Canyon and its Culture (Norton, New York, 1986); and Alden C. Hayes et al, Archaeological Surveys of Chaco Canyon (University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1987).

  Everything that anyone would want to know about Packrat Middens is described in the eponymous book by Julio Betancourt, Thomas Van Devender, and Paul Martin (University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1990). In particular, Chapter Nineteen of that book analyses the hyrax middens from Petra.

  The possible link between environmental damage and the decline of Greek civilization is explored by K.O. Pope and T.H. Van Andel in ‘Late Quaternary civilization and soil formation in the southern Argolid: its history, causes and archaeological implications’, Journal of Archaeological Science 11, pp. 281–306 (1984); T.H. van Andel et al, ‘Five thousand years of land use and abuse in the southern Argolid’, Hesperia 55, pp. 103–28 (1986); and C. Runnels and T.H. van Andel, ‘The evolution of settlement in the southern Argolid, Greece: an economic explanation’, Hesperia 56, pp. 303–34 (1987).

  Books on the rise and fall of Maya civilization include those by T. Patrick Culbert, The Classic Maya Collapse (University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1973); Michael D. Coe, The Maya, 3rd edition (Thames and Hudson, London, 1984); Sylvanus G. Morley et al, The Ancient Maya, 4th edition (Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1983); and Charles Gallenkamp, Maya: The Riddle and Rediscovery of A Lost Civilization, 3rd revised edition (Viking Penguin, New York, 1985).

  For a comparative account of collapses of civilizations, see The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations, edited by Norman Yoffee and George L. Cowgill (University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1988).

  Chapter 18: Blitzkrieg and Thanksgiving in the New World

  Three books provide good starting points and many references to the large, contentious literature on human settlement and the extinction of large animals in the New World. They are the book by Paul Martin and Richard Klein cited under Chapter Seventeen; Brian Fagan, The Great Journey (Thames and Hudson, New York, 1987); and Ronald C. Carlisle (editor), Americans Before Columbus: Ice-Age Origins (Ethnology Monographs No. 12, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, 1988).

  The blitzkrieg hypothesis was outlined by Paul Martin in his article ‘The Discovery of America’, Science 179; pp. 969–74 (1973), and modelled mathematically by J.E. Mosimann and Martin in ‘Simulating overkill by Paleoindians’, American Scientist 63, pp. 304–13 (1975).

  The series of articles that C. Vance Haynes, Jnr has published on Clovis culture and its origins include a chapter on pp. 345–53 of the book by Martin and Klein, cited under Chapter Seventeen, and the following selected articles: ‘Fluted projectile points: their age and dispersion’, Science 145, pp. 1408–13 (1961); ‘The Clovis culture’, Canadian Journal of Anthropology 1, pp. 115–21 1980); and ‘Clovis origin update’, The Kiva 52, pp. 83–93 (1987).

  For the simultaneous extinction of the Shasta ground sloth and Harrington’s mountain goat, see J.I. Mead et al, ‘Extinction of Harrington’s mountain goat’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 83, pp. 836–39 (1986). Critiques of pre-Clovis claims are provided by Roger Owen in a chapter ‘The Americas: the case against an Ice-Age human population’, pp. 517–63 in The Origins of Modern Humans, edited by Fred H. Smith and Frank Spencer (Liss, New York, 1984); by Dena Dincauze, ‘An archaeo-logical evaluation of the case for pre-Clovis occupations’, in Advances in World Archaeology 3, pp. 275–323 (1984); and by Thomas Lynch, ‘Glacial-age man in South America? A critical review’, in American Antiquity 55, pp. 12–36 (1990). Arguments in support of a pre-Clovis date for human occupation levels at Meadowcroft Rockshelter are summarized by James Adovasio in ‘Meadowcroft Rockshelter, 1973–1977: a synopsis’, pp. 97–131 in J.E. Ericson et al, Peopling of the New World (Los Altos, California, 1982), and in ‘Who are those guys?: some biased thoughts on the initial peopling of the New World’, pp. 45–61 in Americans Before Columbus: Ice-Age Origins, edited by Ronald C. Carlisle, cited above. The first of several projected volumes with a detailed description of the Monte Verde site is by T.D. Dillehay, Monte Verde: A Late Pleistocene Settlement in Chile; Vol. I: Palaeoenvironment and Site Contexts (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC, 1989).

  Readers interested in keeping up on the story of t
he first Americans and the last mammoths will enjoy subscribing to a quarterly newspaper, Mammoth Trumpet, obtainable from the Center for the Study of the First Americans, 495 College Avenue, Orono, Maine 04473.

  Chapter 19: The Second Cloud

  Species-by-species accounts of extinct and endangered species are contained in the Red Data Books published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (abbreviated IUCN). There are separate books for various groups of plants and animals, and separate books are also now appearing for different continents. Corresponding books for birds have been prepared by the International Council for Bird Preservation (abbreviated ICBP): Warren B. King, editor, Endangered Birds of the World: The ICBP Red Data Book (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC, 1981); and N.J. Collar and P. Andrew, Birds to Watch: The ICBP World Checklist of Threatened Birds (ICBP, Cambridge, 1988).

  A summary and analysis of modern and Ice-Age extinction waves and their mechanisms are provided by my article ‘Historic extinctions: a Rosetta Stone for understanding prehistoric extinctions’, pp. 824–62 in Quaternary Extinctions by Martin and Klein, cited under Chapter Seventeen. The problem of overlooked species extinctions is discussed in my article ‘Extant unless proven extinct? Or extinct unless proven extant?’ in Conservation Biology 1, pp. 77–79 (1987). Terry Erwin estimates the total number of living species in a paper ‘Tropical forests: their richness in Coleoptera and other arthropod species’, The Coleopterists’ Bulletin 36, pp. 74–75 (1982).