Why did he get it?

Official Press Release of Nobel says:

Pretty impressive I think. Obama really gives hope to many people around the world but giving him a Nobel for that? Unusual.

Nobel academy, obviously has many motivations in givinhg Obama this honor. Though, it's a great risk for the prestige of this award. Isn't this award based on prestige, for 100 years?

If Obama really succeeds in solving some of the major political conflicts, then ok, nobel commitee would have lost anything. But what if Obama does't manage to fullfill his committements to Americans and to the World, and fails? Wouldn't it damage Nobel?

Peace category is different from scientific and literary categories, though it is very important in drawing th world's attention. The recipients are more popular, therefore arguable. 1994 prize given to Yasser Arafat; Peres and Rabin also had raised questions like the Obama prize, and there were ciritics that although nothing concrete has accomplished, they were awarded a Nobel.

After going through the list of Nobel laureates, for the peace award, i guess, for the real popular ones they're saying : “It would be good if you have accomplished something, if not don't worry, if you try you will get one!”

I've read articles proposing a Re-Evaluation of the prize, because it has lost its meaning. All I know, if I were a Nobel price winner with my achievements, I would very upset:)

This was indeed the main starting point of the book I recently read, Guns&Germs&Steel. It is not as easy to read as Harry Potter but it was not hard for me to read at all. The author, Jared Diamond gives this Pizarro – Attahuallpa battle in order to attire reader’s attention. It sure does!

While I was reading the book, I discovered that I have never thought about the subject before. I’m sure %99 percent of my friends haven’t also. The great thing about the book, you learn why the history happened that way, instead of what happened. He uses known examples of New Guinea and Australian tribes in explaining and his arguments and he thereby proves his examples.

I would really recommend you to read the book, though reading a book like this need concentration and time. Now I’m going to try to resume his major arguments on why some continents were more advanced than the others.

His major point of all, is that there is no racial cause such as Europeans were more intelligent than Native Americans, but instead all the levels of civilization of continents individually, depend on geographical differences. So if 40000 years ago, if some magical force replaced Native Australians with Europeans, it would still be the Europeans who discovered and conquered Australia, not vice-versa.

We all know that throughout the history, settled-farmer communities were the ones who reached to a much higher civilization level, not the hunter-gatherers. But hunter-gatherers were not hunter-gatherers by their choices, they were obliged to , in order to survive in their geological constraints. The change for societies from Hunter-Gatherers to Settled Farmers, do not occur on one day, they pass through a long transition period. And they only decide to change their lifestyles(hunter-gatherer/settled farmers) when they have adequate sources.

Sources in this case, are usable (eatable) plants and also protein-rich animals. A concept “Domesticability” is very important here. For the plants, it means that the plant is becoming more productive over generations and gives product useful to humans.

On the other hand, a Domesticable animal means an animal which adapts over generations to be kept under human control, abandons its wildness, from birth to death. Cows, dogs, cattle, horses are examples of domesticated animals. Cheetahs, zebras, elephants are not.

One remark about Domesticable animals, that there are animals that are not domesticated but tamed; such as elephants in India. They were kept in cages and used in wars etc. but they never adapted themselves to human control and therefore never domesticated.

Some animals and plants can be domesticated, while some cannot. This was a major difference in continents individually. Fertile Crescent, in south west Asia was home to many Domesticable plant and animal species, by 8000 B.C. This was a huge advantage of the region. Consequently, the population of the region changed their lifestyles from hunter gathering to farming and agriculture. So they could reach more easily to the State (Nomads- Tribes- Chiefdom- State) comparing to the other populations in the other continents.

Sumerians, Egyptians, Hittites are examples of such great civilizations.

Discovery of writing is an interesting topic. According to Diamond, simple writing forms have occurred individually in 5 different regions of the world: Mesoamerica, like India, Mesopotamia, China, and Egypt . As it is very useful to accumulate and pass information, the discovery of writing bring populations enormous advantages.

What’s really interesting is, on the continent of America, simple writing forms were found only in MesoAmerica and those forms never reached the stage to pass information. Instead, writing was used only for only simple purposes; the lack of interactions between American civilizations, was one of the reasons of this lag.

Diamond explains the different stages of evolution of languages and writing form, though the lack of writing in America, is one of the main reasons of the lack of technology in the continent.

If we look at the map of the world, we see that continent of America and Africa is oriented from north to south, that means the length of these distances is superior than the length of its east –west axis. Whereas Eurasia is oriented on east-west axis.

So what’s the importance?

Well, a lot. First of all, in the same latitude levels, the climate is similar. What does that give us?

Traveling is easy (Think of the Silk Road which is a path that exist for at least 3000 years). That brings commercial technological exchange between cultures, so what is invented in China can be brought to France, vice-versa. Information is shared and isolation of societies is not possible.

Plus on similar latitude levels, one is to be able to plant same crops. That boosts the agricultural growth. The crops that are found to be initially in Atlantic Europe could be brought to India for plantation. The same is also true for exchange of Domesticable animals.

In history, that gave the continent Eurasia, a major advantage over the other continents. Australia was isolated with few useful crops and animals; Sahara desert separated the North Africa from south and South Africa was almost isolated from Eurasia; whereas in America the Mexican deserts and extreme changes formed an unsuitable environment for travel and exchange of different crops.

It's easy to travel from east to west and from west to east. Whereas when in the north-south direction there are many natural barriers. In Africa there are Sahara Deserts, in America there are Mexican Deserts, in Australia, there are mountains and a very variable climate which isolates the populations within the same continents. These natural barriers prevented human populations to exchange information and to interact.

Very interestingly, 2 of he main American civilizations Incas and Aztecs were not aware of each other.

When 2 different human populations involve in a battle against each other, germs are a major factor on the outcome of the battle. In other words, the diseases that populations have been exposed during centuries, by natural selection, make populations resistant to these microbes, and therefore in the next generations they don't get affected by them. So when 2 populations isolated from each other, physically interact suddenly, they get exposed to different microbes.

This is the case for Australia-European or America-European collisions. Continents had different conditions and therefor their populations had different resistances. But in each case, Europeans had a major advantage. Why?

Diseases generally pass humans from animals. So in order to have the disease, humans and animals should live very closely, and be populous. That means Domestification. Animal domestification was common in Eurasia, whereas America and Australia lacked such animals( or had very little amounts of them). So the more involved European farmers with animals, the more they got diseases, which turned out to be Epidemics. Because of epidemics like Black Death, Europe's population has decreased to its %40. In Egypt, the Black Death killed about 40% of the population. Survivors though, were resistant to these epidemics.

On the other side, in Australia and in America, these epidemics never occurred before the Europeans. They had fewer domesticable plants and animals, therefore have not suffered from epidemics like Eurasians did. So when Europeans come to conquer these continents, they unconsciously brought their germs, which killed more Native Americans or Australians than they did with their guns. Europeans were exposed to local diseases and suffered from them, but recovered quickly.

Before reading this book, I had no idea about the role of germs on the colonization of continents, pretty interesting, huh?

Until the last chapter, Diamond's arguments are mainly on the advantages of Eurasia to others, or the disadvantages of other continents. Well he doesn't very much focus on the interactions between the Eurasia continent itself, only in the last chapter and in the afterword.

Though, in the last chapter, he poses the question “ Why Europe, not China?”

China has a few geographical barriers not preventing, a major empire to dominate the region. China has completed its unification almost 2000 years ago and generally stayed unified since then. Not having a close empire to compete, China lost the technological leadership to Europe. When innovative ideas were discouraged from the leaders of the nations, entrepreneurs had no way to give up. They didn't have any other choice. Though in Europe, the situation was different. When an idea, like sailing ships to India across the ocean, if not funded by Spanish ambassador, could well be funded by Portuguese in order to gain advantage of its European rivals.

Europe contains many geographical barriers, not isolating one society from another, though makes it hard for total control. In other words, human populations in Europe was close enough to interact and pass information, but incapable of dominate of all continent. Accordingly, in Europe many different cultures have evolved and managed to survive. That brought competitivity, innovation and technology.

Finally, I am glad, I read this book who required concentration and time, but gives very interesting and valuable information. Also I am glad that I could finally finish this post which I hope, will be the longest post ever in the blogging history:) Book is very easy to read, and Diamond by repeating same arguments in different chapters makes you really understand it. Though, I was expecting more about “why Atlantic Europe not China” part, though it was just a couple of pages. Maybe I'd read about a book specifically on that question.

After this post, I feel like I've been given some kind of award( because its so long!) Therefore I wanna thank my parents and my friends for supporting me. Also I wanna thank my producer and blah blah:)

P.S: Sorry about my poor writing skills, I may have made many grammatical mistakes, maybe couldn't explain the arguments sufficiently. Well at least the topic is interesting:)

 

After I’ve read Next, I understood I knew almost nothing about the subject and this book taught me a lot. I mean A LOTT!!

Don’t worry, my intention is not telling you the end of the story I just want to share some real facts from which the author itself got inspired too. 

Transgenic Art

•       Cactus that grows human hair(2002) : This example of transgenic art performed by artist Laura Cinti, is a cactus that grows real human hair. She obtained this result by implementing keratin genes in our hair to the cactus genome.
  

Animals with developed communication skills 

Koko: Koko is gorilla with extensive language capabilities. He can understand more than 2000 English words and 1000 signs based on sign language.

 

 N’kisi: N’kisi is an African grey parrot with a vocabulary of approximately 950  words. There's an  audio of N'Kisi in conversation with his owner Aimee.    

Apparently Grey Parrots are animals with really special communication capabilities( I wish I  had oneJ ). 

I personally think all this stuff are pretty amazing, and shocking. It’s true that in this era we are faced with different usages of genetic engineering, and biotechnology is one the most important topics of 21^st century.

 So actually there are a  lot more in the book, but I don’t wanna cover all the topics. I highly recommend you to read the book and enjoy.