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    The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?
    Unavailable
    The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?
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    The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?
    Audiobook18 hours

    The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?

    Written by Jared Diamond

    Narrated by Jay Snyder

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only yesterday-in evolutionary time-when everything changed and that we moderns still possess bodies and social practices often better adapted to traditional than to modern conditions.

    The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past as it had been for millions of years-a past that has mostly vanished-and considers what the differences between that past and our present mean for our lives today.
    This is Jared Diamond's most personal book to date, as he draws extensively from his decades of field work in the Pacific islands, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people, and others. Diamond doesn't romanticize traditional societies-after all, we are shocked by some of their practices-but he finds that their solutions to universal human problems such as child rearing, elder care, dispute resolution, risk, and physical fitness have much to teach us. A characteristically provocative, enlightening, and entertaining book, The World Until Yesterday will be essential and delightful reading.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateDec 31, 2012
    ISBN9781101605431
    Unavailable
    The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?
    Author

    Jared Diamond

    JARED DIAMOND has been the national baseball writer for the Wall Street Journal since 2017. Prior to that, he spent a season as the Journal’s Yankees beat writer and three seasons as their Mets beat writer. In his current role, he leads the newspaper’s baseball coverage. This is his first book.  

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    Reviews for The World Until Yesterday

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      In what ways are traditional societies similar to each other, and modern state-based societies similar to each other? In what ways do modern and traditional societies resemble and differ from each other--and is there anything that we can learn from the surviving traditional societies before they disappear?

      Jared Diamond takes an in-depth look at what distinguishes traditional from modern societies, and what we can learn from them. This is not a hearts & flowers mash note to traditional societies; he's at some pains to make clear that the lives of traditional peoples, whether hunter-gatherers or farmers, are generally harder, shorter, and more dangerous than modern, state-based societies. Injury and disease are far more likely to be crippling or fatal. Death from violence, whether by murder or in war, claims a much higher percentage of the population, despite fond illusions of "the gentle !Kung" and the notion that war is a modern invention.

      Diamond spent much of his career studying birds in New Guinea, and in the process found it necessary to become very familiar with the traditional-living peoples of New Guinea--hunter-gatherer bands and farming villages, groups strongly connected to the Papua New Guinea state and groups still living with relatively little contact with that state.

      Some of the areas of human social behavior he examines are child-rearing, treatment of the elderly, dispute resolution, religion, and language. The subject of dispute resolution is especially important. Without a state-based legal system to use, individuals must settle disputes among themselves. On the positive side, the first step is nearly always an effort at peaceful resolution, even in very serious cases such as when a child is killed accidentally. When it's successful, the result is not a simple right/wrong determination with damages paid by the side at fault, but rather a resolution that addresses the aggrieved party's feelings of hurt, anger, or being wronged, and restores the relationship between the parties that existed before the dispute. When it fails, though, the result can be a series of tit-for-tat revenge killings or outright war between two clans, bands, or tribes. Diamond looks at the ways we might borrow from traditional people's peaceful dispute resolution methods, potentially relieving stress, anger, and expense in civil and sometimes even criminal disputes without weakening the state justice system structures that largely protect us from the danger of revenge-cycle killings and violence.

      It's a fascinating and thoughtful book, and Diamond gives us his experiences of living between modern and traditional societies, and a glimpse of the world as it looks through traditional eyes. I've barely touched the surface; you need to read this one.

      Highly recommended.

      I received a free electronic galley from the publisher via NetGalley.
    • 4/5
      Really enjoyed the exploration of traditional societies. He seems overly worshipful of the idea of political power and dismisses free societies as a possibility with no argument.Great historical stuff in here, highly recommend.
    • 5/5
      Another excellent audio by Jared Diamond. This audio delivers on its title and then some. Makes you appreciate who we are.
    • 4/5
      Jared Diamond has spent a lot of time with traditional societies, particularly in Papua New Guinea where most of the remaining such societies are based, and not surprisingly he finds much to recommend them, whilst accepting that he wouldn't want to spend much more than the 7% of his time there that he currently does, and also mentioning that "first contact" tribes are not at all sentimental about their life and quickly recognise the appeal of more rice and fewer mosquitoes. In The World Until Yesterday, Diamond points out some of the benefits of traditional societies that he thinks modern society has eschewed to its detriment. One of the more interesting of these was his discussion of relative styles of child rearing - and it is probably true that a child benefits from continuous "skin contact" with its mother and other adults and rarely being on its own. But to do anything about that requires a complete restructuring of modern society which seems unlikely to happen. We are not going to stay in our community our entire lives; personally, from where I live, the nearest family member is 4,000km away. The next nearest is 11,000km away. This is the case for an increasing number of people. And it seems unlikely and is certainly undesirable, that women are going to depart from the workforce on mass to spend more time in touch with their child (although if workplaces where more child friendly, it would be another story entirely)I enjoyed his reflections on "constructive paranoia" - yes, its true, we are certainly lax about everyday hazards - child rearing, the elderly, and traditional vs modern warfare. His comments on the benefits of a traditional diet are certainly true - no one doubts the epidemic of obesity and Diabetes 2 that a modern diet brings, but then why not explore why all societies are so keen to abandon it at the earliest opportunity? His comments on religion, though interesting, didn't really seem to fit with the rest of the narrative. Most sensible people accept that religion is the attempt of an inquiring mind to make sense of its environment with the information at its disposal; sometimes supernatural intervention must have seemed the most logical explanation. Why so many educated people still hang on to these myths is another question entirely - but then many books have all been written about that. All in all I enjoyed this, although it was slow going at times. Rather than "The World Until Yesterday" though the book might rather have been titled "Why I enjoy spending time with traditional people in New Guinea, but am pleased to get home"
    • 4/5
       Jared Diamond draws from many disciplines – biology, geography, ethnography, history – in writing enjoyable, insightful books about human civilization. This one is simply a pleasure to read. Relying heavily on his decades of experience among the peoples of New Guinea, he compares cultures and identifies many ways in which those of us living in modern societies might improve our lives by examining “traditional” peoples. He sometimes exhibits bias against Western culture, but, to his credit, he’s also unafraid to point out the benefits of living under the state. He does not romanticize the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, especially in regards to warfare, disease, and starvation.Along with a wealth of factual information, this book contains a considerable amount of speculation and opinion. Diamond doesn’t try to hide it: it’s clear from the beginning that he only asks us to consider what he has to say before coming to our own conclusions. I happen to agree with him more often than not, and I rarely felt that he was trying to force his opinions on me - except in the chapter on language, which devolves into an uncharacteristic rant. The stronger sections are persuasive enough that they changed my mind on a few topics. I think there’s enough here to make anyone pause and think twice before their next decision, whether they are raising a child or selecting groceries.I should mention that this book lacks footnotes, endnotes, and a bibliography. We are given only a Further Reading section at the end of book, and we’re directed to a web site that contains a more extensive Further Reading page, in paragraph form. This decision was apparently intended to make the book more accessible to a wide audience, but I think it does more harm than good. There’s a lot of solid factual information in this book, but without citations it’s often difficult to tell where the facts end and the opinions begin. This is not something I want to see again.
    • 4/5
      A little rambling, with lots of personal anecdotes. Really enjoyed the contrasting of traditional life stories with modern ones. A bit repetitive, but kind of in the way a series of conversations might be with an older friend (if the older friend was a scientist/naturalist). Some really great stories, including a near drowning from being ferried by an overloaded motorized canoe.
    • 3/5
      What can those of us living in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic) societies learn from those who don't? More than you might think, according to Jared Diamond. This book provides several personal anecdotes of his time spent with hunter/gatherers and farming groups in New Guinea, but he speaks of others as well. By almost any measurable criteria you can imagine, people in WEIRD societies are much better off than those in what he calls traditional societies. We live longer, are less likely to be victims of war and violence, suffer fewer diseases, have more reliable access to food.... But these benefits come with costs. We eat a lot of junk (sugar, salt, fat), which brings on diseases, like hypertension and diabetes, that are uncommon in traditional societies. That's not because people in traditional societies are wiser or more virtuous or anything like that. It's because cheeseburgers, Doritos, and Snickers bars don't grow on trees and can't be dug out of the ground or brought down with a poison arrow. Still, there's a lesson here. Too much of a good thing isn't good for you. There are also personal costs relating to group identity and community interaction. In traditional societies, everyone knows everyone else in the group. Of course, that's only possible in small groups. I certainly don't know everyone in my city, or even in my neighborhood. For one thing, it's too large. For another, physical proximity does not imply the level of shared interests that it does in a traditional society. He also draws interesting comparisons on "legal" disputes, care of children and the elderly, and religion. Perhaps the most important lessons we can derive from the few surviving (and recently extinct) traditional societies are hints of where we came from. What kind of lives did our ancestors live? What challenges did they face? How did they overcome them? We owe much to those nameless ancestors. Because of them we can enjoy longer lives with much less risk of hunger, disease, and violence. This book helps us appreciate that.
    • 4/5
      This book, by Jared Diamond, looks at traditional societies and the way they look/looked at the world and points out that our Western ways of doing things is not the only way of looking at the world, or solving problems.
      Diamond is an American scientist who has spent a lot of time in New Guinea and his anecdotes and stories from this area are very interesting, though he does take a look at other societies as well.
    • 4/5
      An enveloping read on traditional cultures, ranging from New Guinea to South American Indians, and comparing them to modern mainly American society. Doesn't romanticize either and highlights in interesting ways the differences between the two. Topics from warfare to child rearing and health are explored.
    • 4/5
      The book was interesting and had some specific areas of interest for me including discussion of religion, diet, health, and language. Some topics such as that of constructive paranoia were discussed to excruciating detail. Jared is excellent at detailed research and has an academic approach to his analysis. This is helpful to some extent and can also generate some lengthy discussion of minutia. Overall I liked the book and would recommend it. I am convinced to adapt some behaviors from ancient civilization including diet modification.
    • 2/5
      I confess that I didn't get very far into this book at all, so maybe my review is unfair. However, there were so many major methodological problems at the beginning of the book that I was afraid to read on - I wasn't willing to trust any of Diamond's conclusions, because he is so cavalier with his evidence.My problem is that he treats "traditional societies" as a single homogeneous thing. He acknowledges at the beginning that he is oversimplifying his terminology, but "oversimplify" doesn't begin to describe it. He only briefly touches on the fact that gathering reliable information about "traditional societies" is extremely problematic. For pre-modern traditional societies, we have to rely on archaeological evidence, which can only tell us so much and can be extremely difficult to interpret, especially depending on the quality of the archaeological dig. For traditional societies who have come into contact with modern societies, the evidence is even more difficult to interpret - the very act of gathering the evidence taints it, because it requires interacting with these people. Diamond briefly mentions these facts, then goes on to totally ignore them. He will make a statement about traditional societies, and then he will provide 5 examples, but these examples are all from different time periods and different parts of the world. It is very problematic to make generalizations based on such disparate evidence, but Diamond doesn't seem to mind at all. When he gives examples, he never discusses how certain we can be about the statements he is making, or what evidence he bases these statements on. I fear that he is cherry-picking the examples that back up his points and ignoring examples that do not.So that's why I didn't read much of this book - Diamond's use (or misuse) of evidence made me distrust any conclusions he might make.
    • 2/5
      I really wanted to like this book, but I don't. It would have been better if he had refrained from repeating himself endlessly in the first few chapters. I may get back to this one eventually, but probably not.
    • 5/5
      Starting point: Evolutionary - traditional societies closer to the conditions we adapted to, this gives a prima facie reason to believe that practices they widely practice make sense. Much diversity among traditional societies - interesting to think of them as experiments and find the success stories. Can get the best of two worlds by combining such experiments with modern freedom? A problem with those societies is probably that people do not have an exit option, it's probably not easy to just join a neighboring band or tribe. But maybe we can organize ourselves s.t. we have smaller experimental zones/cultures while preserving an exit option today? Possible selection problem: the tribes, etc that we see today are those that are from areas that were never conquered, e.g. because they lived in unappealing places or had some resilient features. But only a selection problem if what we are after is to learn about the past, not for the seeing more diversity part. Diamond selects the following topics: -where we can learn something personal: dangers; child rearing-where we can learn something personal and use in public policy: treatment of the elderly, multilingualism; health promoting lifestyles-mostly for policy: peaceful dispute resolution-also: religion; warfare. The latter is said to be the field in which the benefits of modern states are most clear. Conflict solving more about restoring relationships than establishing who is right. A story about a driver who killed a boy in an accident, but clearly by no fault of his own, but who still had to pay compensation and to a great extent fear retaliation from the boy’s family before that was done. The compensation process would have been much the same in the case in which the driver had been negligent or even intentionally killed the boy, although with higher compensation rates and a greater danger of physical retaliation. So maybe our concept of randomness or accidental is not something that they have? Related to Hacking’s Emergence of probability? Moral inhibitions against killing humans not as prevalent in traditional societies as in modern, although typically knows the enemy and bears a grudge against him. Friendship takes a much more local and kin-based form. Lifelong relationships - norms against investing in a sewing machine to start a mending business, should rather help people for free and get other favors and services in return. Crime, tort and contract law into one. Take into account how everyone in the community affected. Applications to Western world seems quite limited, like improving opportunities for mediation and closure meetings (between victim and perpetrator after the verdict). -surprising that he does not mention what I see as one of the big dangers of centralization - the breakdown of the whole system - tribes cannot create world wars. When it comes to bringing up children, Diamond speaks very much to the choir for my part. Carrying infants close, sleeping in the same room for a long time, exposing children to many caregivers, including from different education, letting children explore the world autonomously pretty much seems like common sense to me. The advantages of an abrupt response to crying infants, multilingualism and from spending time with different age groups are convincingly conveyed. At times Diamond makes arguments that are not well sustained, for instance rationing health care by age is not about an obsession with a cult of youth or a view that lives of the old are little worth. Thought-provoking parallel between the old’s right to food and young women in traditional societies and modern property rights. The big point made about “constructive paranoia” is a bit overmade, as it is not obvious that one should make a different choice when facing a low-probability danger many times than when facing it once. Maybe forest people’s fear of cars can serve as a fresh look upon what is relatively more risky, e.g. surgeries more than pesticides, and traffic accidents more than …, although many are mistaken about these. We can see their fear as stemming from not having learnt how dangerous crossing a street is. Also there is very little macho culture and hiding of fear. Maybe the macho culture in Western societies comes from us not facing many life-threatening dangers? Interesting to note that they have many wrong explanations, e.g. for male with a respiratory syndrome, which is blamed on female menstruation and other far-fetched things, and only partial explanations for causes for diseases. Learning is insufficient. Diamond suggests that that traditional people may have a more realistic view of risk since get more direct feedback, whereas we get a distorted view through sensationalist news, etc. about rare types of accidents. American soldiers allegedly more risk-seeking than French in Iraq, speculates that may be because the French have more war history. We should not forget the fact, underlined by Diamond, that many decide to move to cities or villages, not to be rich, but because life is safer and more stable and mosquitoes and diseases are rarer.Food and sex have opposite roles in traditional vs. modern societies, they worry about food, but sex is plentiful, whereas we have enough food, but worry about sex. Some have claimed that Diamond cherry-picks findings to fit his story, but this is less a severe criticism than it might seem, since he explicitly sees the world of traditional people as being full of small experiments that we might learn from, though by no means all or even a majority. To be fair, an extended argument also says that these people through trial and error often have converged on some good practices, but this is not necessary for the approach to make sense. Overall a great book.
    • 4/5
       Jared Diamond draws from many disciplines – biology, geography, ethnography, history – in writing enjoyable, insightful books about human civilization. This one is simply a pleasure to read. Relying heavily on his decades of experience among the peoples of New Guinea, he compares cultures and identifies many ways in which those of us living in modern societies might improve our lives by examining “traditional” peoples. He sometimes exhibits bias against Western culture, but, to his credit, he’s also unafraid to point out the benefits of living under the state. He does not romanticize the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, especially in regards to warfare, disease, and starvation.Along with a wealth of factual information, this book contains a considerable amount of speculation and opinion. Diamond doesn’t try to hide it: it’s clear from the beginning that he only asks us to consider what he has to say before coming to our own conclusions. I happen to agree with him more often than not, and I rarely felt that he was trying to force his opinions on me - except in the chapter on language, which devolves into an uncharacteristic rant. The stronger sections are persuasive enough that they changed my mind on a few topics. I think there’s enough here to make anyone pause and think twice before their next decision, whether they are raising a child or selecting groceries.I should mention that this book lacks footnotes, endnotes, and a bibliography. We are given only a Further Reading section at the end of book, and we’re directed to a web site that contains a more extensive Further Reading page, in paragraph form. This decision was apparently intended to make the book more accessible to a wide audience, but I think it does more harm than good. There’s a lot of solid factual information in this book, but without citations it’s often difficult to tell where the facts end and the opinions begin. This is not something I want to see again.
    • 3/5
      A study of the comparisons and contrasts between "traditional" societies, the hunter-gatherer and small agriculture societies of the past, with modern society, with a view as to what "we" have "lost" and what may be profitable to be "regained."The author draws on his multi-decade experience among the traditional societies of New Guinea along with the work done by other researchers in societies in Asia, the Americas, and Africa. He discusses such matters as interaction among people of different groups, war, child raising, religion, and language. The author attempts to remain objective and dispassionate in his analysis but his own inclinations are often clear enough, especially in terms of his seeming contempt for religion. This is most assuredly a "scientific" analysis, attempting to understand the challenges, situations, and explanations for them in terms of materialism/evolutionary philosophy. The book does well at getting us to consider the many changes that have taken place throughout the years, many for the better, and some for the not so better. An interesting read.
    • 4/5
      Jared Diamonds reflects on the aspects of hunter gatherer societies that might be usefully applied to the modern western world.This is not his best book, but he sets such a high standard, so his near misses are better than most books. There seems to be a surplus of facts in the early chapters and not enough analysis and discussion. But later chapters - particularly the one on religion, make up for the slow start.He suggests that the many variations on a theme demonstrated by the various early societies that have been studied provide a type of sociological experiment, and we can learn from the outcomes. He is at pains to point out that aspects on life, such as the violence and early death, are not ones we want to emulate. But things like gentle child rearing, extended family interactions, lack of processed food etc are open to us to include in our lives.Read March 2013.
    • 3/5
      Diamond contrasts traditional and modern societies in their treatment of harms (torts or crimes, in the language of the formal state), wars, the elderly, childrearing, languages, eating, and several other major areas. I learned a fair amount about New Guinea, but this isn’t really a book with a big idea in the way that his earlier two popular works were. He thinks we should do more to integrate the elderly into the broader society, and to a certain extent children too; we should eat less and exercise more; and we should make an effort to raise children with more than one language. Here’s Slate’s view, with which I sympathize: “By the end of the book, it is impossible to tell if one has finished reading a masterpiece of rigorous analysis or a masterfully written collection of just-so stories.”
    • 4/5
      While not the most prolific scientist when it comes to books, Jared Diamond has always produced high quality, thought provoking content. Ever since his days as a contributing editor to Discover Magazine, I've been a fan of his and read everything published. We are all getting on in years now, and Diamond is getting a little too old to keep adventuring to the rarely-documented areas of Papua-New Guinea and other exotic locales. As such, this book includes a lot of memoir material that deviates from the thesis of the book.Tribal societies such as those in PNG are examples of what Diamond characterizes as "traditional" societies. As agriculture and urbanization took hold, our own western society (as well as equivalents in China, India, Japan, Egypt and the Middle East) deviated from the hunter-gatherer paradigm exhibited by modern "traditional" societies. These societies are most common on isolated islands or relatively recently colonized locations such as Australia, The Philippines, and sub-Saharan Africa. These tribes have their own languages...some islands might have hundreds of distinct languages (not dialects), most spoken by tenuously few people. As in his books Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel; Diamond advocates the preservation of these dwindling cultures, arguing that loss of language will forever deprive the world of the collected wisdom and lore of these tribal societies. He also concedes it could be a losing cause -- much of the industrialized world just doesn't care about such things and believe that such people will be better off getting with the modern program. Diamond presents documentation on what effect can be expected...especially the introduction of non-communicative diseases (NCDs) like heart disease and diabetes. Some will argue shorter lifespans are one reason NCDs are relatively unknown to these societies. Accidental or environmental death (famine, weather disasters, etc) are far greater hazards that most of us face in the first world. But those who do survive to old age can stay remarkably healthy and active, with no sign of these NCDs. Furthermore, when people migrate to cities and become urbanized, they often embrace the western lifestyle too readily, and show greater instances of obesity and related problems (take American Samoa, for example). Among the dietary considerations covered by Diamond is salt intake -- there are tribes whose members take in as much dietary salt in the course of a year that some Americans use in just a day or two (and that the FDA guidelines specify as a month's intake). Diamond tries to provide take-aways by which tribal societies can contribute to the modern world. It's not all a one-sided bias, however -- he doesn't suggest, for example, that we follow the example of one tribe that kills the women when their man dies (with the full cooperation of the woman, I might add). On the plus side, Diamond discusses the benefits of bilingual education -- something that will soon be a topic in my own household and I was glad to see my own thoughts not only validated, but enhanced by his coverage of research that suggests those raised in a bilingual household are able to stave off dementia-related illness in late life by an average of four years.I hope Diamond has another book or two in him. I'd love to read a more straight-forward memoir as he's certainly had some interesting times. Like an aged grandpa who often strays off topic to reminisce about long-past adventures, Diamond often goes a little off track, but the since the stories are interesting, we forgive him.