Book
The world until yesterday : what can we learn from traditional societies? / Jared Diamond.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780670024810
- ISBN: 0670024813
- Physical Description: xi, 499 p., [32] p. of plates : ill. (some col.), maps ; 25 cm.
- Publisher: New York : Viking, c2012.
Content descriptions
| Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references (p. 471-481) and index. |
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Available copies
- 1 of 1 copy available at Town of Hanover Libraries.
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- 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
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| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Howe Library | 305.89 DIA | 31254003385388 | Lower level | Available | - |
The World until Yesterday : What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?
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Table of Contents
The World until Yesterday : What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?
| Section | Section Description | Page Number |
|---|---|---|
| List of Tables and Figures | p. xi | |
| Prologue: At the Airport | p. 1 | |
| An airport scene | ||
| Why study traditional societies? | ||
| States | ||
| Types of traditional societies | ||
| Approaches, causes, and sources | ||
| A small book about a big subject | ||
| Plan of the book | ||
| Part 1 | Setting the Stage by Dividing Space | |
| Chapter 1 | Friends, Enemies, Strangers, and Traders | p. 37 |
| A boundary | ||
| Mutually exclusive territories | ||
| Non-exclusive land use | ||
| Friends, enemies, and strangers | ||
| First contacts | ||
| Trade and traders | ||
| Market economies | ||
| Traditional forms of trade | ||
| Traditional trade items | ||
| Who trades what? | ||
| Tiny nations | ||
| Part 2 | Peace and War | |
| Chapter 2 | Compensation for the Death of a Child | p. 79 |
| An accident | ||
| A ceremony | ||
| What if ...? | ||
| What the state did | ||
| New Guinea compensation | ||
| Life-long relationships | ||
| Other non-state societies | ||
| State authority | ||
| State civil justice | ||
| Defects in state civil justice | ||
| State criminal justice | ||
| Restorative justice | ||
| Advantages and their price | ||
| Chapter 3 | A Short Chapter, About a Tiny War | p. 119 |
| The Dani War | ||
| The war's time-line | ||
| The war's death toll | ||
| Chapter 4 | A Longer Chapter, About Many Wars | p. 129 |
| Definitions of war | ||
| Sources of information | ||
| Forms of traditional warfare | ||
| Mortality rates | ||
| Similarities and differences | ||
| Ending warfare | ||
| Effects of European contact | ||
| Warlike animals, peaceful peoples | ||
| Motives for traditional war | ||
| Ultimate reasons | ||
| Whom do people fight? | ||
| Forgetting Pearl Harbor | ||
| Part 3 | Young and Old | |
| Chapter 5 | Bringing Up Children | p. 173 |
| Comparisons of child-rearing | ||
| Childbirth | ||
| Infanticide | ||
| Weaning and birth interval | ||
| On-demand nursing | ||
| Infant-adult contact | ||
| Fathers and allo-parents | ||
| Responses to crying infants | ||
| Physical punishment | ||
| Child autonomy | ||
| Multi-age playgroups | ||
| Child play and education | ||
| Their kids and our kids | ||
| Chapter 6 | The Treatment of Old People: Cherish, Abandon, or Kill? | p. 210 |
| The elderly | ||
| Expectations about eldercare | ||
| Why abandon or kill? | ||
| Usefulness of old people | ||
| Society's values | ||
| Society's rules | ||
| Better or worse today? | ||
| What to do with older people? | ||
| Part 4 | Danger and Response | |
| Chapter 7 | Constructive Paranoia | p. 243 |
| Attitudes towards danger | ||
| A night visit | ||
| A boat accident | ||
| Just a stick in the ground | ||
| Taking risks | ||
| Risks and talkativeness | ||
| Chapter 8 | Lions and Other Dangers | p. 276 |
| Dangers of traditional life | ||
| Accidents | ||
| Vigilance | ||
| Human violence | ||
| Diseases | ||
| Responses to diseases | ||
| Starvation | ||
| Unpredictable food shortages | ||
| Scatter your land | ||
| Seasonality and food storage | ||
| Diet broadening | ||
| Aggregation and dispersal | ||
| Responses to danger | ||
| Part 5 | Religion, Language, and Health | |
| Chapter 9 | What Electric Eels Tell Us About the Evolution of Religion | p. 323 |
| Questions about religion | ||
| Definitions of religion | ||
| Functions and electric eels | ||
| The search for causal explanations | ||
| Supernatural beliefs | ||
| Religion's function of explanation | ||
| Defusing anxiety | ||
| Providing comfort | ||
| Organization and obedience | ||
| Codes of behavior towards strangers | ||
| Justifying war | ||
| Badges of commitment | ||
| Measures of religious success | ||
| Changes in religion's functions | ||
| Chapter 10 | Speaking in Many Tongues | p. 369 |
| Multilingualism | ||
| The world's language total | ||
| How languages evolve | ||
| Geography of language diversity | ||
| Traditional multilingualism | ||
| Benefits of bilingualism | ||
| Alzheimer's disease | ||
| Vanishing languages | ||
| How languages disappear | ||
| Are minority languages harmful? | ||
| Why preserve languages? | ||
| How can we protect languages? | ||
| Chapter 11 | Salt, Sugar, Fat, and Sloth | p. 410 |
| Non-communicable diseases | ||
| Our salt intake | ||
| Salt and blood pressure | ||
| Causes of hypertension | ||
| Dietary sources of salt | ||
| Diabetes | ||
| Types of diabetes | ||
| Genes, environment, and diabetes | ||
| Pima Indians and Nauru Islanders | ||
| Diabetes in India | ||
| Benefits of genes for diabetes | ||
| Why is diabetes low in Europeans? | ||
| The future of non-communicable diseases | ||
| Epilogue: At Another Airport | p. 452 | |
| From the jungle to the 405 | ||
| Advantages of the modern world | ||
| Advantages of the traditional world | ||
| What can we learn? | ||
| Acknowledgments | p. 467 | |
| Further Readings | p. 471 | |
| Index | p. 483 | |
| Illustration Credits | p. 499 |
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