Oh, his arguments are perfectly justified. I mean, he's only arguing that it is fair to judge a hunter-gatherer society as equal to an advanced one by the merit of you can't judge anything by any factual factor, you just can't!
These civilisations are not perfect, therefore the Aboriginal one is?
For some deluded reason, the burden of proof is on one side of the argument. I haven't seen anybody successfully argue why (Indigenous Culture >= Western), or even why any reason it could be.
Would you consider this society/culture superior to ours?
And, I thought we've already established before that primitive hunter-gatherers have poor lifespans. They may have health problems now, but it was much worse pre-colonisation.
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Furthermore, please give some solid...
"In this environment," Diamond said, looking around at the purple jellybean world, "I'd be helpless without them." He touched his toes appreciatively.
Context, please?
I am.
I prefer centuries of Western arts, philosophy, history and innovation over ritual sacrifice and a very accurate calendar.
EDIT: And wealth. Let's not forget wealth. Mmmm.
Yes, they had the right animals and crops to domesticate. But I was saying when humans started farming. Unless I've misunderstood, or am just plain wrong?
I agree it was rather pithy word choice. :p
Beats me why there's healthcare, then.
Not sure why you dismiss the whole argument and then...
This does not erase the fact they had a hunter/gatherer lifestyle pre-colonisation. Whilst it's all very well to say, that sounds like good exercise and so much fun, it is not the optimal way to live and life expectancies of such primitive practices are (as have been mentioned) 30.
If aliens did invade us, and our technology was as useless as the Indigenous spears were to guns, then we would be defeated. Killed, enslaved, etc. And the reason for our downfall would be that the alien species had a civilisation far more powerful than our own. The other half of 'superiority'...