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實踐創意 小學生進階程式設計挑戰繪本 2 程式設計能做什麼？（書末附指導者教學建議）

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實踐創意 小學生進階程式設計挑戰繪本 2 程式設計能做什麼？（書末附指導者教學建議）: : 21344 micro: bit micro: bit4micro: bit 4 201642018 3DARVR107 KK 4 44COMIC4

監修者: 松田孝     譯者: 卓文怡 / 李彥樺

      表哥帶著機器人到三姊弟家拜訪，正在寫作業的三姊弟趁機考考機器人會做哪些事情。機器人算數超快又正確，但是卻不太擅長寫作和運動，原來程式設計也有擅長和不擅長的地方。而透過網際網路，還能幫助我們搜尋資料、做到更多事情，甚至對災害預防、健康管理都有很大的貢獻！

　　當孩子還未深入了解程式設計的原理時，可能會以為只要有程式設計，什麼事情都可以做得到。但程式設計也有其極限和限制，若超出它的能力範圍，也無法完成指令，例如需要思考對方感受後再行動，或者是像人類一樣靈活的運動，在現階段都較難實現。不過，只要掌握程式設計做得到和做不到的事，並善用程式設計的長處，人類就能和程式設計互相幫助，不論是生活或未來的工作，都會更有效率。

　　程式設計已被正式納入臺灣教育，在未來的科技時代中，它更是人人不可或缺的生活能力。這雖然是一本程式設計的入門書，但是我們不教孩子複雜的程式語言，而是先從生活應用和基本概念入門，讓孩子經由實際觀察和體驗，認識程式設計應用的廣泛，並介紹相關的新知和發展，引起孩子的好奇心和興趣，讓孩子主動且愉快的踏出程式設計基礎的第一步。

　　※書末附指導者教學建議和教具分析
　　臺灣中小學資訊教育第一線的教師特地為孩子量身打造，設計扣合繪本主題、又容易操作的程式設計教學建議，並且分析市面上常見的程式設計教具，透過理解概念和實際應用，挑戰繪本中的題目，讓孩子輕鬆具備程式設計的能力。

　　本書為「【實踐創意】小學生進階程式設計挑戰繪本」系列的第2冊，另有《1：什麼是程式設計？》、《3：程式設計大挑戰》、《4：一起來學程式設計》，為孩子接軌國中三年的科技領域課程。若想了解演算法和程式設計的基礎概念，敬請參閱本系列繪本第一套「【不插電】小學生基礎程式邏輯訓練繪本」（全4冊）。

　　※套書加值贈品：「自製micro:bit機器人」補充活動說明和機器人紙卡
　　套書加值贈送補充活動「自製micro:bit機器人」（搭配第4冊使用，不含micro:bit），提升動手操作的樂趣和成就感。

本書特色

　　在前一套「【不插電】小學生基礎程式邏輯訓練繪本（全套4冊）」中，我們已經為孩子打下演算法的基礎，並透過各種生活情境和有趣的小遊戲，讓孩子知道「演算法就是解決問題的方法」，拉近孩子和程式設計的距離，為孩子揭開輕鬆學習程式設計的序幕。

　　現在我們要讓孩子進一步認識生活中有許多事物都和程式設計有關，只要掌握程式設計的原則，了解它能做什麼、不能做什麼，就可以將程式設計應用在各種面向中，幫助我們輕鬆解決問題。

　　書末的「給指導者」特別延請臺灣資訊教育第一線的國小資訊教育教師執筆，以簡單易懂的程式設計素材和教具為範例，針對臺灣教育現況和孩子們需要加強的部分撰寫學建議，不論是孩子自學、親子共讀、或是作為學校教材，都會是您指導孩子的最佳幫手！

監修者

松田孝

　　東京學藝大學教育學部畢業，上越教育大學研究所碩士課程修畢。歷任東京都公立小學教師、指導主任、指導室長，於2016年4月就任東京都小金井市立前原小學校長。自2018年起進入早稻田大學研究所教育學研究科攻讀博士課程。提倡資訊通訊裝置的積極運用，為一百多年來不曾改變過的初等公共教育推動改革。

強傑麟（「給指導者」作者）

　　臺北市立教育大學自然科學系碩士班畢業，國小現役教師。熱愛3D列印建模、雷切雷雕、AR、VR、四軸無人機和機器人等新興科技，喜歡引領孩子從驚奇到喜歡的過程中，對資訊科學和生活科技產生興趣和求知慾。曾指導初次接觸機器人的孩子獲得「107年臺北市格鬥機器人公開賽」冠軍。

審訂者

謝宗翔（謝KK）

　　國立臺灣師範大學資訊教育學系畢業，國中現役教師。致力推廣資訊科學教育，想讓孩子在快樂的學習氣氛下認識資訊科學，進而對資訊科學領域產生興趣。著有《偷插電的資訊科學【教師手冊】》及《什麼啦！這也是資訊科學！》，提供中小學教師對於運算思維教學的指引，以及小學階段資訊科學的基礎科普閱讀素材。

譯者

卓文怡

　　曾在日本大阪攻讀日中口筆譯。擅長實用書籍、推理小說等各領域之翻譯。翻譯作品有「【不插電】小學生基礎程式邏輯訓練繪本」（全套4冊）、《外星人真的存在嗎？》、《超好玩！到處都是數字的繪本》、《超好玩！各式各樣形狀的繪本》、《食物工廠大探險：走吧！來趟食物的變身之旅》、《出發吧！人體探險隊》、《日常生活中的無印良品親子收納術》（以上皆由小熊出版）。

李彥樺

　　日本關西大學文學博士。現任臺灣東吳大學日文系兼任助理教授。翻譯作品有「【不插電】小學生基礎程式邏輯訓練繪本」（全套4冊）、「中小學生必讀科學常備用書」系列（全套4冊）、「COMIC恐龍物語」系列（全套4冊）、《骨之旅：從海洋到陸地，看見人類與萬物的演化關係》（以上皆由小熊出版）。
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Tim F. Martin
Grantham, US
★★★★★ 5
Outstanding work of history, one of the best ever
_Guns, Germs, and Steel_ by Jared Diamond is one of the most informative, epic, well-written, and fascinating "macrohistory" books I have ever read. In this book, Diamond discussed the rise of complex human societies in the last 13,000 years, seeking to answer one fundamental question; why did some civilizations come to dominate others? Why did the Fertile Crescent and China for instance develop advanced societies with, as the title suggests, guns, germs, and steel, while other areas of the world, such as Polynesia, Australia, and the Americas, did not? Or in those cases where some civilizations were beginning to acquire such things, why did they get off to such a late start? Why did the Spanish conquer the Incans instead of vice versa? In a nutshell, he concluded that societies developed differently on different continents not because of racial differences in attitudes or intelligence, but because of differences in continental environments. Advanced technology, centralized political organizations, writing, and professional armies (or simply put the military advantage of simply having large numbers of people), etc. could only emerge in dense, sedentary populations capable of accumulating food surpluses. Unfortunately, domesticable wild plant and animal species needed for agriculture to arise were very unevenly distributed around the world, with the most valuable species concentrated in only nine small areas of the globe (Southwest Asia, China, Mesoamerica, the Andes and the adjacent Amazon basin, the eastern U.S., Africa's Sahel, West Africa, Ethiopia, and New Guinea), all of which became the earliest homelands of agriculture and thus regions that got a head start on developing guns, germs, and steel. Animals were vital to a society as a source of meat, milk products, fertilizer, transportation, leather, for military use, plow traction, and wool and those areas that lacked suitable animals to domesticate suffered accordingly in terms of societal development. The Late Pleistocene extinctions of large mammals in the Americas and Australia deprived humanity in those areas of potentially very valuable domesticable species. Of the big (over 100 pound) herbivores and omnivores, 148 potential candidates for domestication, they are mostly located in Eurasia (72 candidate species, versus 51 in Sub-Saharan Africa, 24 in the Americas, and 1 in Australia). Further, out of those candidates, only 14 were actually domesticated, 13 of them in Eurasia; what he called the "Major Five" - sheep, the goat, cow, pig, and horse, and the "Minor Nine" - the Arabian camel, Bactrian camel, donkey, reindeer, water buffalo, yak, Bali cattle, mithan (wild ancestor the gaur, found primarily in India and Burma), and the one American one, the llama and alpaca (two well-differentiated breeds of the same species). The other 134 potential candidates were eliminated due to problems with diet, growth rate, problems of captive breeding, nasty disposition, tendency to panic, and/or social structure, any one problem enough to preclude domestication even in modern times. Of further interest, Southwest Asia had seven of the wild ancestors naturally occurring, a huge advantage. In the world of plants there were similar disparities in distribution; of the 56 species of grass with the heaviest seeds, at least 10 times heavier than median species, Eurasia's Mediterranean zone had 32 of them, with barley and emmer wheat 3rd and 13th respectively in seed size. In contrast, of the 56 species, only 6 were found in East Asia, 4 in Sub-Saharan Africa, 11 in the Americas, and 2 in Australia. Another set of differences lead to a variation in societal evolution in the case of plant and animal domestications as well as in technological innovations and political institutions, as most societies acquire much more from other societies than they invent themselves (his discussion on the evolution of writing and in particular the alphabet in this regard was fascinating). Diffusion and migration within and between continents played a very important role in the development of a society, and in some continents diffusion and migration was considerably easier, most rapid in Eurasia because of its east-west major axis and its relatively modest ecological and geographical barriers. As crops and animals depended strongly on climate and hence on latitude, huge areas ranging almost from the Atlantic to the Pacific were open to the movement of domesticated plants and animals. Diffusion was slower in Africa and especially in the Americas due to those continents north-south major axes (traveling just a few hundred or a thousand miles north or south can render a society's crops and animals completely unsuitable for use) and much more pronounced geographic and ecological barriers (such as the Sahara Desert in Africa). Similarly, diffusion in the last 6,000 years has been easiest from Eurasia to sub-Saharan Africa, while long completely absent between Eurasia and the Americas (isolated at low latitudes by broad oceans and at high latitudes by geography and by a climate suitable just for hunter-gatherers). The last set of major factors he analyzed related to continental differences in area or total population size. A larger area or population meant more inventors, more competing societies, more innovations that exist to be adopted, and more pressure to adopt and retain those innovations, as those societies that fail to do so tend to be eliminated or absorbed by competing societies. Among the world's landmasses, area and the number of competing societies were greatest for Eurasia, while considerably smaller for Australia for instance. The Americas, despite their rather large total land area, were in effect fragmented by ecology and geography into a series of poorly connected smaller continents. Relating to both population size and the "Eurasians' long intimacy with domestic animals" was the development of germs. Crowd diseases could not sustain themselves in small bands of hunter-gatherers or slash-and-burn farmers, nor perhaps would they develop at all, as only human association with cattle gave us for instance measles (evolved from rinderpest) and smallpox (evolved from cowpox). Obviously I have just scratched the surface in my review. This is an excellent book that ties together findings in history, archaeology, paleontology, epidemiology, and linguistics in an extremely readable and informative format.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2005
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mtspace
Massapequa, US
★★★★★ 4
Monumental Thesis, Richly Researched & Carefully Argued
Motivating this book are two questions 1) When Spanish conquistador Pizzaro encountered Inca emperor Atahualpa, how did the former, with fewer than two hundred men overwhelm the latter with over 80,000? and 2) When the Europeans set up colonies on the island of new Guinea, why was it that they had so much stuff to trade, but the natives of the island had so little? The answer to the first question is, of course, that the Spanish had Guns, Germs, and Steel. Diamond does an outstanding job arguing for the pivotal importance of Germs in the equation. He clearly explains - using the idea of germs - why Europeans overran the Americas and Australia but not Africa. His agument regarding steel is notably weaker; but I think it does support his thesis adequately. I failed to detect a compelling argument for why Europeans had guns but others did not. The book's primary focus is on how civilization got started. He looks first at the cultivation of plants and then at the domestication of animals. Examining areas in Africa, Eurasia, the Americas, and Australia, he totes up the lists of suitable flora and fauna and evaluates their merits. He notes that it was the fertile crescent that harbored the most suitable grains, legumes (or pulses), and domesticable animals. No other location comes close to having this rich combination of natural resources. He shows that this explains the very early appearance of agricutlure and therefore of writing, religion, and law in this area (and in China). He also shows how any human advancement would spread more quickly in Eurasia than it would within the Americas and Africa. This gives Eurasia a double advantage; it can harbor more people by virtue of its agricultural practices and each person has greater access to new ideas because of strong east-west trade currents. Thus cultures in Eurasia could easily adapt ideas based on those of other societies instead of creating them from scratch. He concludes that any person who accepts his thesis of the forces shaping civilization - at least the necessary precondition to get started - would necessarily conclude that civilization's advances must inevitably run quickest on the Eurasian continent. A large portion of the book is focussed on the factors influencing the establishement of an agricultural system that is capable of supporting a whole large class of non-agricultural workers. The assumption, I believe, is that we already know that this is the primary requirement for the birth of a civilization. Still I was looking forward to Diamond's take on what happens after we all learn to read and write. I was hoping he might explain the ascent of the west since 1000 BC or 1500 AD. But he does not. He does not, for instance, argue why it was the British and Spanish, not the Turks and Indians who settled Australia and the Americas. This, perhaps is a different question. Yet it seems to be linked to the idea of frontiers and access to resources. For it is always when the full set of advanced cultural practices reach populations in the richest, most uncultivated frontiers and these ideas cast anew in the light of a new environment that civilization seems to gain its greatest momentum. He uses Polynesia as a microcosm for the world. In this laboratory, a group of people with the same genetic cross-section and same cultural practices embarked on a grand venture to settle all the islands of the Pacific some two millenia ago or so. The systems of government they set up and the level of civilization they reached were highly dependent upon the agricultual productivity of their citizens. Colonists on small islands unsuitable for agriculture became hunter-gatherers and lived in egalitarian societies. Those in productive lands organized into small states with strong chiefs or kings, each with their own little standing armies. The book is richly researched and solidly argued as far as it goes. But there are a handful of quibbles one might raise. 1) The author tends to repeat himself. As the book progresses, the portion of prose that is a restatement of something said before becomes so high that this reader found himself skipping whole chapters. 2) The author fails to provide a compelling argument about why China lagged Europe at some point after 1500. One wonders why the author did not simply use the argument at hand. Colonialism provided to Europe the raw materials necessary for industrial production. China was closed until two or three decades ago and so did not have adequate access to the raw materials that vaulted Europe and North America to their current place. The opening of China to the world has quickly closed this gap. In other words, the cultural practice that gave frontier states the advantage was the high value they realized in trade: of getting required natural resources and finished goods from other places instead of being closed off. The book's central thesis is that the first and most necessary condition for the success of a society lies in its access to the required resources, and that transport of goods and ideas is crucial to the success of this enterprise. For this book to fail to make this connection I find to be an astonishing lapse. 3) Unless it is hidden in one of the skipped chapters, Diamond never starts to answer the second motivating question about 'stuff', even though it is a simple and direct extension of his fairly robust argument. This book is of crucial importance in counter-balancing our Darwinian view of the world. It was not that Europeans were better people by some genetic measure. (Darwin seemed to assume a single measure of fitness. But each environmental variable provides a different metric of fitness so the whole notion of one group being generally 'more fit' is utter nonsense.) It was that they had a body of technologies, cultural practices and diseases that naturally tended to overwhelm other groups. And that these ideas and practices (and sometimes diseases) are an inevitable advantage any agrarian or post agrarian society has over a less highly organized one. Europeans simply got a head start thanks to geography. There is much to learn, and much to contemplate in this book. Read It.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2005
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Verified Purchase
A.C.E
Chelsea, US
★★★★★ 5
You may never see the world the same way again
Format: Hardcover
Ok I got a lot out of this book. Like Yali, the charismatic New Guinean local politician who quizzed the author 25 years before the book was written wanting to know why Europeans developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea which had little cargo of theirs, I bought this book in a bid to understand why Africa and its inhabitants developed at a much slower pace than other continents. Was it a matter of fate? Or was the politically incorrect charge that Africans are innately inferior to their fairer skinned counterparts somewhat justified ? Jared Diamond makes a strong case for Geography's deterministic role in the evolution of societies. In other words, the rich societies of today simply won the geographical draft lottery (in terms of who got the largest continental pie/size, who got the most ideal conditions for farming, who got the most number of wild mammals suitable for domestication, and who got the widest variety of wild plant species ideal for agriculture) played over 13,000 years ago when modern man began to settle into village life in a few parts of the world. That decisive edge, reinforced over the last 13,000 years is what led to the emergence of an indomitable Europe that eventually came to lead the world due to its development of guns, germs, and steel. According to the Author, Eurasia got decisively lucky in more ways than one: The Late Pleistocene extinction decimated Eurasia's competitors by felling wild mammal species of most of North and South America and those of Africa that may have facilitated intensive farming instead of the hunter-gathering lifestyle which eventually became a big impediment to the development of rapidly evolving complex societies on those continents. Those extinctions left Eurasia with many more wild candidates for domestication than the Americas and Africas offered. Agriculture and Continental Size were huge enablers. Eurasia is twice as large as the next largest continent, Africa, and had a wide extensive landmass of fertile soil amidst a variety of wild life that were easily domesticated for animal herding and valuable crops that facilitated the development of intensive farming techniques that helped serve denser populations and formed the basis for the formation of complex organized societies. Denser populations tend to rise only under conditions of food production, populations served by food surpluses from intensive farming techniques were more likely to have non-farming specialists, technocrats, warriors and bureaucrats. In contrast, poorer societies such as hunter-gatherers without such advantages remained as hunter-gatherers living in bands which were far from ideal to produce crop surpluses available for redistribution or storage, and hence could not support and feed non-hunting craft specialists, armies, bureaucrats, and chiefs to enable them evolve complex societies. In turn, agriculture spawned lethal germs emanating from Eurasian's long advantageous exposure to domestic Animals which was as decisive in eliminating local populations in conquest as guns and steamboats were. As illustrated by the New world's conquest of almost 95 percent of the 20million American Indians; exposing the Indians to strains of germs the Indians had never been exposed to, and against which they therefore had neither immunity nor genetic resistance to. The development of writing was another essential agent in assisting the conquests of Eurasian Societies: by fostering the development of maps that were beneficial to sailors exploring new lands to conquer, by providing a new way of communicating and (through preserved records) inspiring later generations to conquest, writing played a crucial role in the course of civilization but could not have been possible without food production. Writing emerged independently only in the Fertile Crescent, Mexico, and China because those were precisely the first areas were food production arose in their respective hemispheres. I already told you that what brought me to this book was to understand why as an African, we've evolved rather slowly compared to everyone else? I got my money's worth somewhere in pg 399 where the author states that "the factor behind Africa's slower rate of Post Pleistocene development compared with Eurasia's is the different orientation of the main axes of thee continents. Like that of the Americas, Africa's major axis is north-south, whereas Eurasia's is east-west. As one moves along a north south axis, one traverses zones differing greatly in climate, habitat, rainfall, day length, and diseases of crops and livestock. Hence, crops and animals domesticated in one part of Africa had great difficulty in moving to other parts. In contrast crops and animals moved easily between Eurasian societies thousands of mile apart but at the same latitude and sharing similar climate and day lengths". In a nutshell, geography, and not biology, ultimately did us in. I found this book a bit of a slog to get through due to the author's interdisciplinary approach ( history, archaeology, evolutionary biology, sociology, cultural anthropology etc) which mirrors his career trajectory so far. One of the few bones I have to pick with the book, as so many other reviewers have already mentioned, is its lack of sources. I also thought the author strove, quite frequently, a bit too hard for political correctness in for example, sounding a bit patronizing to the plight of poor societies like mine. I admit it may amount to career suicide for a tenured professor to have done otherwise; but to my mind any reader who can't handle a little intellectual honesty no matter how inconvenient isn't ready to address the fundamental questions about the human condition. For some reason, the kindle version I purchased didn't have images due to copyright issues. A bit of a setback because I didn't have any maps handy to make sense of the strange locations that pop up at various points in this read and no thanks, I like to read with an internet connection as far from me as possible. Then lastly, there was the glossy treatment of why different parts within Eurasia developed differently which he addresses scantly in a later edition of the book. But GGS ultimately proved to be a great read for me, and highly recommended for anyone who wants a keener appreciation of the world we live in today. But be forewarned, you may never see the world the same way again which surely is a good thing.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2012
Z
Verified Purchase
Zachary Ruesch
Charlottesville, US
★★★★★ 5
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Format: Hardcover
Recently, I finished this great, broad, historical, and significant endeavor. Let me begin by expressing my appreciation of Jared Diamond’s wonderful ability to simplify a very complex topic and related ideas. This alone, makes this read a great one. Too, there a few gems of humor and wit within the pages which caught my eye and mind. Don’t get me wrong though. The pages are filled with complex data, examples, and comparisons. Upon more than one occasion, my understanding necessitated the rereading of paragraphs and pages. Before I proceed into deeper thoughts, I must admit the duration of this read as being conducted well over an extended timeframe. I began reading it years ago, stopped, and then started again. Over the course of the last several months, I recommitted and achieved. In thoughtful detail, Diamond seeks to explain why certain groups of people have been successful over the course of human events and history, while others, in comparison, are not. It should be noted, the idea of “success” is very subjective. So, success in this case, is related to Western ideas of technological development, exploration, and conquest - generally described as one group of people gaining control or influence over another. An effective description of this is the Spanish conquest and colonization of the “New World,” especially the Aztecs and Incas. This example, though quite large in scope, and as pointed out by Diamond, has occurred throughout human history in large and small ways involving a multitude of others groups of people, both known and unknown. In short, I believe Diamond does well in addressing the impact and luck of geography and resources, as well as, the influences of more innate human characteristics and variety. The debate of nature versus nurture is here too contained. In the past, and not only in recent history, humans have expressed understandings of success in terms of innate differences which must exist between people - obviously though, those in power and dominate are able to define and express such ideas. However, Diamond looks beyond this and recognizes the complexity, and ultimately more profound influence of reality, nurture. In this sense though, it is not simply human nurturing and choice, it is the opportunities presented to humans, in difference places, at different times, to take advantage of their earthly surroundings and the ability to nurture developments, or not. This read is filled with a plethora of well detailed examples which come to show how access, or not, to certain elements leads to the success and superiority which has been described and known by those in power, throughout history. So, today, when certain people look down upon others and their lack of some qualities or characteristics, Diamond’s historical analysis provides engaging insight beyond and through the bias. Who we are presently is the result of all the past experiences of the human ancestors who preceded us, and furthermore, our development and success, in comparison to other humans, is simply more so the result of the access we have had to a confluence of resources and circumstances which allowed us to dominate other groups of humans with less access to the same. As groups of humans defined through sociological processes, we are no more intelligent, healthy, or physiologically better than the whole of humanity understood to exist through anthropology, biology, and any other area of study. “We all know that history has proceeded very differently for peoples from different parts of the globe...Those historical inequalities have cast long shadows on the modern world, because the literate societies with metal tools have conquered or exterminated the other societies. While those differences constitute the most basic fact of world history, the reasons for them remain uncertain and controversial.” In this work, Diamond splendidly explains how, “History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves.” Please give the ideas of these pages the opportunity to share with you a detailed perspective of human experience which reaches far into the depths of history, beyond even the earliest written language. Diamond’s words will likely cause you to become lost in thoughts of the past. However, at the same time, he’ll take you to definitive places of demonstrable purpose leading to a better future understood through the context(s) of human experience.
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Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2016
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D. Cloyce Smith
Los Angeles, US
★★★★★ 5
Brilliant, eclectic panorama of the past 13,000 years
This intriguing and expansive book gathers knowledge from a number of fields (archaeology, anthropology, ecology, evolutionary biology, horticulture, and more). Its novelty is not in the details, any of which can be found in other books, but in the synthesis of 13,000 years' worth of human history. Diamond argues that many (but not all) of "the striking differences between the long-term histories of peoples of the different continents have been due not to innate differences in the people themselves but to differences in their environments." Diamond covers so much material that any attempt at summary would be imprecise. The sections I found most compelling dealt with agriculture and animal husbandry--two topics that would have probably induced sleep if covered by another author. For example, he presents the fascinating background that the dominant five "large" domesticated mammals--sheep, goats, cattle, pigs, and horses--originated in central Eurasia (and that no easily domesticated, large mammals were available, for example, to North Americans or Australians); that these animals include the world's only widespread "beasts of burden," giving their human handlers additional advantages in mobility and farming; and that most of the world's lethal diseases resulted from proximity to the barnyard, gradually providing Eurasians with immunity to illnesses that later wiped out entire societies upon first exposure. The minor mammals (camels, llamas, reindeer) were too limited by geography and climate to affect the course of history outside their confines. As for zebras, bears, giraffes, tigers, hippos--to this day, nobody has been able to domesticate them. While this seems intuitively obvious, no writer has so clearly and irrefutably connected the dots, showing how access to these animals gave early chiefdoms an insurmountable advantage over those human societies without them and allowed them to develop surpluses and commerce that supported the world's most enduring civilizations. Comments made by the author's critics, while few in number, nearly prevented me from reading this book and need to be addressed so other readers won't be similarly discouraged. A few readers seem offended by Diamond's self-mocking and somewhat tongue-in-cheek assertion (in the Introduction) that the natives of New Guinea have certain advantages that make them arguably more "intelligent." Yet these commentators are willfully ignoring the context: Diamond admits that "New Guineans tend to perform poorly at tasks that Westerners have been trained to perform since childhood," yet he is quite aware of how "stupid I look to New Guineans when I'm with them in the jungle." That is, if one defines "intelligence" not as the knowledge needed to use a computer or write a book review but, rather, as the ability to survive in the wild ("following a jungle trail" or identifying poisonous mushrooms, to cite two of the author's examples), then the New Guineans win hands down. To make a similarly lighthearted argument: when the house of cards we call "civilization" is threatened by the least misfortune (economic recession, power blackout, bad weather, the death of a British princess), a frightening number of otherwise "intelligent" people, instead of relying on their wits and survival skills, rush straight for their therapists. Likewise, anyone who accuses Diamond of "geographic determinism" cannot have read the epilogue, in which he clearly rejects such an extreme position. He admits that individuals and cultures--and, for that matter, pure chance--can also influence history, but "that some environments provide more starting materials, and more favorable conditions for utilizing inventions, then do other environments." The author's argument is unambiguous: while culture, as well as individual inventors and rulers, certainly influence history on a microcosmic level (during spans of centuries or millennia), there are larger factors, such as geography and ecology, at play when human history is considered as a whole over the last 13,000 years. Diamond is looking at the forest rather than the trees; thus, to fault the author for ignoring such factors as religion and politics is off the mark, since such belief systems didn't exist in anything remotely resembling their present form for most of the period under discussion. Furthermore, to identify human advances in terms of culture still fails to explain how differing cultures arose in the first place. Finally, and more easily dismissed, are those hecklers who howl "political correctness." Such critics seldom identify flaws in the author's arguments or even tell us what they insinuate by this increasingly meaningless term. Since the book's span is so sweeping and since many of Diamond's hypotheses are offered tentatively (as suggestions for a new "science" of history), there are bound to be statements or implications that may eventually prove inaccurate or too simplistic. I strongly suspect, however, that his overarching thesis will withstand the test of time; at the very least, "Guns, Germs, and Steel" will inspire open-minded thinkers to consider human history--in its broadest sense--in a whole new light.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2003

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