Thursday, December 6, 2007

History in 100 Words

The history of the human race in 100 words:

Alan Charles Kors

George H. Walker Endowed Term Professor of
History

  • First, tribes: tough life.
  • The defaults beyond the intimate tribe were violence, aversion to difference, and slavery. Superstition: everywhere.
  • Culture overcomes them partially.
  • Rainfall agriculture, which allows loners.
  • Irrigation agriculture, which favors community.
  • Division of labor plus exchange in trade bring mutual cooperation, even outside the tribe.
  • The impulse is always there, though: "Kill or enslave the outsider."
  • Gradual science from Athens' compact with reason.
  • Division of labor, trade, the mastery of knowledge, plus time brought surplus, sometimes a peaceful extended order and, rules diversely evolved and, the cooperation of strangers - always warring against the fierce defaults of tribalism, violence, and ignorance.
  • No one who teaches you knows what will happen.
  • http://www.sas.upenn.edu/home/news/trans_Kors.html


Pretty accurate in my opinion.

2 comments:

Jess Wundrun said...

Totally off-topic, Py. Sorry. But I don't see an e-mail address for you. Coming to Phoenix over Christmas. Meetup at your bar or rafting (with the whole Wundrun clan?)

We will also be in Scottsdale this weekend but no time for get aways

pygalgia said...

email address is in the profile, but it's saarey@hotmail.com. I'm actually in Flagstaff, about 200 miles north of Phoenix. Keep in touch.