Top Jared Diamond Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Jared Diamond Biography

Jared Mason Diamond (born September 10, 1937) is an American ecologist, geographer, biologist, anthropologist and author best known for his popular science books The Third Chimpanzee (1991); Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997, awarded a Pulitzer Prize); Collapse (2005); and The World Until Yesterday (2012). Originally trained in physiology, Diamond is known for drawing from a variety of fields, including anthropology, ecology, geography and evolutionary biology. He is a professor of geography at UCLA.

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Jared Diamond Quotes

The Anasazi did manage to construct in stone the largest and tallest buildings erected in North America until the Chicago steel girder skyscrapers of the 1880s.

America, Chicago, Steel, 1880S, Stone

All of our current environmental problems are unanticipated harmful consequences of our existing technology. There is no basis for believing that technology will miraculously stop causing new and unanticipated problems while it is solving the problems that it previously produced.

Believe, Technology, Environmental, Harmful, Consequences

With the rise of chiefdoms around 7,500 years ago, people had to learn, for the first time in history, how to encounter strangers regularly without attempting to kill them.

Chiefdoms, Encounters, History, Kill, People, Years

In short, Europe’s colonization of Africa had nothing to do with differences between European and African peoples themselves, as white racists assume. Rather, it was due to accidents of geography and biogeography—in particular, to the continents’ different areas, axes, and suites of wild plant and animal species. That is, the different historical trajectories of Africa and Europe stem ultimately from differences in real estate.

Real, Animal, White, Different, Plant, Due

When you have seen the errors in which you live, you will understand the good that we have done you by coming to your land by order of his Majesty the King of Spain. Our Lord permitted that your pride should be brought low and that no Indian should be able to offend a Christian.

Christian, Kings, Pride, Spain, Errors, King

Our biggest threat is not an asteroid about to crash into us, something we can do nothing about. Instead, all the major threats facing us today are problems entirely of our own making. And since we made the problems, we can also solve the problems.

Entirely, Inspiration, Motivation, Solve, Threat, Today

Although native Africans domesticated some plants in the Sahel and in Ethiopia and in tropical West Africa, they acquired valuable domestic animals only later, from the north.

Animal, Literature, West, Africa, Plants, Africans

Take air quality in the United States today: It's about 30 percent better than it was 25 years ago, even though there are now more people driving more cars.

Air, People, States, Take, Years

Not until the beginning of the 20th century did Europe's urban populations finally become self-sustaining: before then, constant immigration of healthy peasants from the countryside was necessary to make up for the constant deaths of city dwellers from crowd diseases.

Cities, City, Constant, Europe, Healthy, Self

Thousands of years ago, humans domesticated every possible large wild mammal species fulfilling all those criteria and worth domesticating, with the result that there have been no valuable additions of domestic animals in recent times, despite the efforts of modern science.

Animal, Effort, Possible, Wild, Worth, Years

Rhino-mounted Bantu shock troops could have overthrown the Roman Empire. It never happened.

Rhinos, Troops, Empires, Empire, Overthrown, Bantu

The rate of human invention is faster, and the rate of cultural loss is slower, in areas occupied by many competing societies with many individuals and in contact with societies elsewhere.

Cultural, Individual, Individuals, Literature, Loss, Rate

Science is often misrepresented as "the body of knowledge acquired by performing replicated controlled experiments in the laboratory. " Actually, science is something broader: the acquisition of reliable knowledge about the world.

Acquisition, World, Body, Knowledge, Misrepresented

Think of all the human suffering caused by the sad truth that beautiful sexy women or handsome Porsche-owning men often prove to have miserable genes for other traits

Beautiful, Genes, Love, Sexy, Traits

I personally am not conscious of my accent.

Accent, Accents, Conscious, Personally

Eurasia's main axis is east
west, whereas the main axis of the Americas is north
south. Eurasia's east
west axis meant that species domesticated in one part of Eurasia could easily spread thousands of miles at the same latitude, encountering the same day-length and climate to which they were already adapted.

Axes, Climate, East, Same, Americas, Thousands

All recognized famous inventors had capable predecessors and successors and made their improvements at a time when society was capable of using their product.

Improvement, Invention, Made, Product, Improvements, Using

What did the last Easter Islander say as he chopped down the last tree? The Easter Islanders didnt have anthropologists.

Down, Easter, Islander, Lasts, Tree

Bird taxonomy is a difficult field because of the severe anatomical constraints imposed by flight. There are only so many ways to design a bird capable, say, of catching insects in mid-air, with the result that birds of similar habitats tend to have very similar anatomies, whatever their ancestry. For example, American vultures look and behave much like Old World vultures, but biologists have come to realize that the former are related to storks, the latter to hawks, and that their resemblances result from their common lifestyle.

Air, American, Bird, Design, Example, Look

No government is here forever. And there are other forces - the most potent force in our society, in fact, big business - doing good for the environment.

Business, Environment, Forever, Government, Literature, Potent

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