Rhino-mounted Bantu shock troops could have overthrown the Roman Empire. It never happened.
("Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies")
More Quotes from Jared Diamond:
Tasmania lies 130 miles southeast of Australia. When it was first visited by Europeans in 1642, Tasmania was occupied by 4,000 hunter-gatherers related to mainland Australians, but with the simplest technology of any recent people on Earth. Unlike mainland Aboriginal Australians, Tasmanians couldn't start a fire.Jared Diamond
The broadest pattern of history - namely, the differences between human societies on different continents - seems to me to be attributable to differences among continental environments, and not to biological differences among peoples themselves.
Jared Diamond
Biology is the science. Evolution is the concept that makes biology unique.
Jared Diamond
Population densities of farmers and herders are typically 10 to 100 times greater than those of huntergatherers. That fact alone explains why farmers and herders everywhere in the world have been able to push huntergatherers out of land suitable for farmi
Jared Diamond
The Indian civilizations of Central and North America remained entirely without pack animals and it took thousands of years for the corn that evolved in Mexico's climate to become modified into a corn adapted to the short growing season and seasonally changing day-length of North America.
Jared Diamond
Lest those islands still seem to you too remote in space and time to be relevant to our modern societies, just think about the risks... of our increasing globalization and increasing worldwide economic interdependence.
Jared Diamond
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Based on Keywords: bantu, rhino-mountedSocial Security represents an $11 trillion unfunded obligation. And when I say unfunded obligation, I mean we have to come up with $11 trillion at some point to make the system whole.
John W. Snow
When you look at our programme for the next few weeks, you do not fancy a trip to the Oktoberfest.
Oliver Kahn
Futurism: This was a movement of intellectuals who wanted to replace tradition with the modern world of machinery, speed, violence, and public relations. It proves that we should be careful what intellectuals wish for, because we might get it.
Brad Holland