Chapter 2 -

A Natural Experiment of History Summary- Morgan W.

In this chapter Jared Diamond focuses on what is called the “natural Experiment” which he defines as the societal growth of different groups expanded over many generations in different environments based on the same ancestry. Thus because this experiment cannot be carried out on human societies, it can only be observed on humans by looking for something similar that occurred to humans in the past. Diamond states that in order to infer that a test will prove that difference will occur on a global scale, we must first prove that it will provide results on a local scale; And so, diamond focuses in on the Polynesian islands, a demographically diverse area, introducing with it two societies, the simplistic hunter-gatherer tribe Moriori, and the technologically advanced, agricultural based people the Maori.

 The Moriori, a peaceful society, were originally settlers of the Maori clan from New Zeeland that colonized an island in the Chatham archipelago then were forgotten by the Maori clan only to centuries later be rediscovered by a New Zeeland seal hunter. The Moriori people were sporadically invaded in the winter of 1835 by the Maori clan, the invaders 500 strong armed with guns, clubs, and axes slaughtered over the following days hundreds of the surrendering Moriori people, cooking and feasting on their bodies, enslaving the rest, and killing them too off as it suited their whim, all in accordance with their custom. This tragedy of the Moriori people, diamond states, “resembles many other such tragedies in both the modern and the ancient world”(Diamond pg54).

Diamond goes on to justify why the Maori were far superior to the Moriori despite only being separated for a few centuries. Before the Moriori broke off from the Maori people, they were on level ground; the Moriori had descended from the Maori who then descended from the Polynesian farmers who settled New Zeeland decades earlier. So, diamond raises the question, why did both groups then evolve in different directions; the Maori evolving into a more technologically and politically advanced society based on intensive farming, whereas the Moriori reverted back to a simplistic hunter-gatherer tribe practicing politics as a community.

These differences, according to the natural experiment would have to be a result of different environments, zooming out to all of Polynesia we see that the thousands of islands scattered out across the pacific differ very greatly in “area, isolation, elevation, climate, productivity, and geological and biological resources (Figure 2.1). For most of human history those islands lay far beyond the reach of watercraft” (Diamond pg55). Almost all these islands were colonized by decedents of

“seafaring people [originating]from the Bismarck Archipelago north of New Guinea finally [who finally]succeeded in reaching some of those islands. Over the following centuries their descendants colonized virtually every habitable scrap of land in the Pacific.”(Diamond pg55).

Within that medium sized natural experiment the fate of the Moriori forms and even smaller test easy to trace to differences between the islands. While both groups originated from tropical fruit farmer, the Moriori had to revert back to hunter gatherers because of the cold climate, because hunting and gathering cannot support a surplus of food for redistribution and storage. They could not support politicians, bureaucrats, or even specialists who did not hunt for their own, it is because of this  and their small size of about 2,000 people that they needed not a centralized government to settle laws and disputes. With no nearby island the people had to learn to get along and they did this by renouncing war, but this left them vulnerable to the Maori.

figure 2.1

The Maori people on the other hand were intensive farmers from New Zeeland, because of their intensive farming and large island space they were able to achieve a large supporting population up to approximately 100,000 people including specialists, bureaucrats, part-time soldiers, therefore requiring  some kind of centralized government but they could not agree on what. New Zeeland was long home to ferocious local wars between populations, developing stronger tools and weapons in order to survive as well as elaborate forts and ceremonial structures. All leading to their eventual success over the Moriori.

Polynesia as a whole was very diverse in environment and people from egalitarian hunter-gathers to the many hierarchical ranked linages with a separation in social classes.

“Contributing to these differences among Polynesian societies were at least six sets of environmental variables among Polynesian islands: island climate, geological type, marine resources, area, terrain fragmentation, and isolation.”(Diamond pg58).

The climate in Polynesia varies from warm tropical to cold sub Antarctic. Lying well within the Tropic of Cancer has mountains high enough to support alpine habitats and receive occasional snowfalls. Rainfall varies from the highest recorded on Earth to only one-tenth as much on islands so dry that they are marginal for agriculture.

While talking about geological types of islands Diamond says,

“Island geological types include coral atolls, raised limestone, volcanic islands, pieces of continents, and mixtures of those types. At one extreme… they consist entirely of limestone without other stones, have only very thin soil, and lack permanent fresh water. At the opposite extreme, the largest Polynesian island, New Zealand, is an old, geologically diverse, continental fragment, … [offers] a range of mineral resources,… Most other large Polynesian islands are volcanoes that rose from the sea,… while lacking New Zealand's geological richness, the oceanic volcanic islands at least are an improvement over atolls… in [which] they offer diverse types of volcanic stones, some of which are highly suitable for making stone tools.”(Diamond pg58).

Later he also explains how volcanic island differ among themselves too  in height, weathering, soil levels, and even in stream occurrences or persistence.

When discussing Marine resources he states that “most Polynesian islands are surrounded by shallow water and reefs, and many also encompass lagoons. Those environments teem with fish and shellfish. However, the rocky coasts”(Diamond pg59),and drop offs of some islands make marine resources obsolete or at least less productive .­­­­­­

Area being another factor contributes both to population growth and political division, the more the room available and resources available the larger the populous can expand. However the larger the area depending on terrain also seeds for division, like happened on New Zeeland  with a very high population but also many warring factions within the land mass itself, was cause for great bloodshed but also some astonishing advancements in weapons, agriculture and politics.

The last environmental variable  being isolation some of the islands were so ” small and so remote from other islands that, once they were initially colonized, the societies thus founded developed in total isolation from the rest of the world.” however, ”most other Polynesian islands were in more or less regular contact with other islands. In particular, the Tongan Archipelago lies close enough to the Fijian, Samoan, and Wallis Archipelagoes to have permitted regular voyaging between archipelagoes and eventually to permit Tongans to undertake the conquest of Fiji” (Diamond pg59).

Food Production however was one of largest factors that influenced Polynesian societies. Polynesian subsistence depended on a variety of fishing, gathering wild plants and marine shellfish, hunting terrestrial birds, and food production. “Most Polynesian islands originally supported big flightless birds that had evolved in the absence of predators,… however most of them were soon exterminated on all islands, because they were easy to hunt down”(Diamond pg60). Ancestral Polynesians brought with them three domesticated animal types the dog the pig and the chicken, but made no attempt of domesticating any indigenous type. Most islands retained all three, but some did not relying back on agriculture, however agriculture was not avail able to all islands because of either infertile/lack of soil or climate, settlers of these islands only brought with them tropical plants that would not grow in the latitudes. Some eventually practiced dry-land cropping and slash and burn agriculture to stimulate growth in these areas. Other island were blessed with rich soils but did not have large Permanente streams for irrigation thus resorting to dry-land agricultures. Hawaii was unique using mass labor in aquaculture for fish population.

As a result of all this environmental variation, human densities (population per square mile) varied greatly over Polynesia, even on some islands exceeded the current population density of Holland. Relevant area in a society was not the area of the island itself but of that political unit, in which most cases varied from a part of an island to that of an entire archipelago. Most islands eluded unification due to factors like isolation and terrain, for example “people in neighboring steep-sided valleys of the Marquesas communicated with each other mainly by sea; each valley formed an independent political entity of a few thousand inhabitants, and most individual large Marquesan islands remained divided into many such entities”(Diamond pg62).

“A political unit's population size interacted with its population density to influence Polynesian technology and economic, social, and political organization. In general, the larger the size and the higher the density, the more complex and specialized were the technology and organization… At high population densities only a portion of the people came to be farmers, but they were mobilized to devote themselves to intensive food production, thereby yielding surpluses to feed nonproducers. The nonproducers … included chiefs, priests, bureaucrats, and warriors. The biggest political units could assemble large labor forces to construct irrigation systems and fishponds that intensified food production even further. These developments were especially apparent on Tonga, Samoa, and the Societies, all of which were fertile, densely populated, and moderately large” (diamond 62).

Population density effected economies, social complexity/cast systems, political organization/equality all the same way the high the population density the more complex the society, with lower densities being the simplest.

By the time Europeans came in the 18^th century many close knitted archipelagos and islands unified themselves, most were not as grand as the Tongan empire expanded across many archipelagos within 500 miles of its center but generally they unified themselves in trade or politics.

“Polynesian island societies differed greatly in their economic specialization, social complexity, political organization, and material products, related to differences in population size and density, related in turn to differences in island area, fragmentation, and isolation and in opportunities for subsistence and for intensifying food production”(Diamond pg65).

-Diamond, Jared. Guns Germs and Steel :THE FATES OF HUMAN SOCIETIES. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1999. Print

Chapter two is fundamental in my opinion for the development of the book, it infers that the type of culture that develops is dependent upon the resources that are available during their early years specifically advancements in food production/preservation. I believe that the availability of food will persist as a main factor of development throughout the book leading to more complex topics like the conquest of nations.

            This chapter was well written and over all made a clear argument with plenty of examples, I personally admire the way that Diamond led from one example clearly into the next explaining each one’s relation individually to the topic leaving no room for confusion. He tied all his examples into the theme of the chapter which was the effects that environment has on a population, and cut everything else out. His use of imagery and related historical fact was very persuasive in describing how environment aspects effected early advancements of society.

            What I noticed is that like  Gladwell he is trying to define what causes success, but also like Gladwell is Diamond’s writing style for this chapter, open with story, introduce phenomenon, throw in an excessive amount of fact, then quickly wrap the chapter up and  introduce the next; Diamond almost steals the whole chapter formatting of Gladwell or vica versa. Unlike Gladwell, Diamond clearly elaborates on each topic and specifically relates each example to that topic, whereas Gladwell had a more broad way of introducing examples with the same results and loosely tying them to the theme of the chapter. Another thing that caught my eye was that diamond did not have to bring up a counter argument in fact if he did include one I believe that it would have only hurt the strength of his chapter. It was strange to see such a one-sided approach but in the end it was very effective and efficient approach for his argument.

Chapter two was all about logos, relating every surrounding condition to an aspect of society, for example two things that seem abstractly different like food production and whether a society has bureaucrats diamond was able to demonstrate step by step the cause and effect on how they were related. This chapter was the most powerful display of logos that I have ever seen in an argument. Diamond set out in this chapter to persuade the reader into seeing the facts, and that is exactly what he did with cold hard indisputable facts. After reading this chapter I feel I have a better sense for the saying “we are a product of our environment” and though it might not shape us directly as individuals it does shape us as a community. However, Diamond did do something that made me uneasy about his work,  he never once in this chapter or in the chapter previous mention where he got the information or where we can find the facts that he based his work on. It is not really a major thing because he does say in the intro that he has been doing research on this topic for a while, but me personally, I’d like to know where the facts are coming from.

The chapter only needed to refer to logos because ethos was already displayed when Diamond listed his credentials in the introduction chapter and pathos was not appropriate for the purpose of the chapter. However, that is not to say that ethos or pathos could not have strengthened the chapter; for example ethos could have been present in the form citing the location that he was pulling the information from, and pathos could have been used to answer why someone should care for reading the chapter. As one can see the chapter does well to stand on its own but the presence of either could have been strengthened the argument further.