Re: [Pen-l] complexity of society [was: Excellent article on Jared Diamond and the New Yorker

[mckenna193@xxxxxxx]

But the first nations of the americas might have conquered the Euros if the diseases had gone the other way, as McNeil pointed out in Plagues and Peoples.  In other words, what if the Aztecs had virulent strains of disease from domesticated animals for which "Fancy Bad Man" Cortez and his troops were not immune?

the HX of world would be different. . .


-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Progressive Economics <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Mon, 11 May 2009 5:48 pm
Subject: [Pen-l] complexity of society [was: Excellent article on Jared Diamond and the New Yorker

raghu wrote:
> .. is it nevertheless
> not true that industrial societies are orders of magnitude bigger,
> more interconnected and more complex than tribal cultures? In the same
> way that a large factory is more complex than a garage workshop.

In reading Raymond Firth's classic (1957) anthropological study, "We
the Tikopia," I was impressed with how complex their society was in
terms of kinship relations and the like. I'd guess that the difference
between "us" and "them" is more a matter of technology than complexity
_per se_. (In simple terms, we were able to conquer them, but they
couldn't conquer us.)

-- 
Jim Devine / "If heart-aches were commercials, we'd all be on TV." -- John Prine
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