To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.
TALES FROM THE WORLD BEFORE YESTERDAY
In Guns, Germs, and Steel, I set out to explain why, after the end of the last Ice Age, the most powerful and technologically advanced societies developed first in the Fertile Crescent and spread from there to Europe and North America. In Collapse, I asked why many societies disintegrated or vanished while others avoided that fate, and what lessons those varying outcomes hold for us today.
Since publication of Collapse, I have been attempting to understand the revolutionary changes in human societies and social relations brought about by the emergence of state government, after seven million years of simpler forms of organization. The differences are so profound, and we take state government as so... Go to conversation