Customer Reviews

Savages And Civilization: Who Will Survive?

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Jack Weatherford has written a wonderful book on the topic of tribal or "primitive" cultures, generally nomadic, often pastoral ones in world history and today, seeking to explore the relationship between tribal peoples and the people of cities and what is thought of as civilization. The fact that these people have gone by so many names throughout history, whether stigmatic names like barbarian, savage, pagan, or heathen or more modern less pejorative names like ethnic group, folk tradition, or national minority shows that urban cultures have generally had a difficult time coming to grips with those outside the mainstream of global civilization.

Weatherford covers a great deal of history in his discussion of tribal cultures. He visits with and discusses the Australian aborigines; those that still have their traditional hunting and gathering lifestyle, he writes, with slight modifications, could have lived almost any time in the last 200,000 years in the temperate and tropical zones of Africa, the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia (covering something like 99 percent of human history). The modern Aleuts and Inuit of North America, the Sami or Lapps of Scandinavia, and such northern Siberian peoples as the Yakut and Chuckhi represent remnants of the thousands of such groups from the last Ice Age, groups that had to give up foraging and worked in groups to hunt the massive megafauna of the Arctic regions, whether mammoths or whales.

The fact that tribal peoples did not settle into the dense concentrations that urban peoples did and many tribal groups had relatively few domesticated animals would have a profound impact upon world history. An interesting point he makes involved pastoral people and disease; virtually every infectious or epidemic disease known among human has a close animal counterpart (smallpox is similar to cowpox in cattle and myxomatosis in rabbits, measles has similarities to distemper in dogs and rinderpest among bovines) and those cultures that did not have much in the way of domesticated animals (such as the Polynesians and Native Americans) were free of these epidemic diseases.

Weatherford wrote that the political and technological interaction between the wandering tribal peoples and civilized peoples for the three thousands years between 1600 B.C. and 1500 A.D. was the focal point of Eurasian civilization. Once indigenous people played a huge role in world history, one group occasionally assimilating the other or forcing millions to move in vast relocations. In some cases the nomads were technological innovators (inventing the horse-drawn chariot and the stirrup, for a time dominating urban peoples until they in turn assimilated these new inventions), in other cases acting as conduits for technological change (the Mongols for instance borrowed animals, ideas, and technology from all parts of their territories, spreading them from Europe to China). For centuries there was, despite the conflicts, a symbiotic relationship between farmers and nomads, as one helped the other (the former supplying cereals, tea, sugar, metal-working, and chemicals for leatherworking, the latter important in bringing in exotic items and introducing new products and ideas); this has been obscured by the fact that most written records about the nomads were left by the settled agricultural peoples and were often biased against the nomads. On occasion this was recognized; North African scholar Ab-ar-Rahman Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) wrote the first historical analysis of the relationship between tribal and urban people; he said that the city people needed the tribal people because the latter reinvigorated the civilized world, bringing in new blood and new ideas (such as Islam and Judaism). They brought a simple, direct, honest way of dealing with the world, a strength that accounted for the success of the Hebrews against the Canaanite cities, the Arab Bedouins in the Middle East, and the Moors in Spain (among others). However, the longer tribal people associated with urban people, the weaker they became. Weatherford makes the point that this assertion of Ibn Khaldun's was predated by the Old Testament of the Bible (evident in how the Hebrews viewed the corrupt cities of Jericho, Sodom, and Gomorrah), unique in being one of the few texts by a nomadic group.

Weatherford definitely wrote what some might call a "big picture" analysis of world history. He devotes several chapters to how eventually the urban peoples of the world came to complete dominate tribal cultures. He wrote that it took roughly 8,000 years for a truly world economy to emerge, the time between the first agricultural village and the start of the first trans-Pacific route from Acapulco to Manila (via the famed Spanish Manila galleon). This process required three major technological and social breakthroughs; the unification of Asia and Europe via the horse (made possible by the invention of stirrups, bridles, and saddles), the connection of sub-Saharan Africa with the Mediterranean world via the camel, and the voyages connecting Europe and Asia across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (made possible by the mastery of celestial and compass navigation and by paper and the invention of the printing press and movable type to maintain contact over thousands of miles and to aid in the creation of modern nation states by standardizing language, culture, and national identity).

I can only give a very brief introduction to this book. Though a quick read, it is epic in scope. Later chapters are devoted to how tribal peoples were treated during the age of imperialism, the advent of anthropology (the "study of the exotic by the eccentric"), and the future of tribal peoples today (which ironically may be aided by technology as it has aided widely separated people to maintain touch with one another and facilitated broadcasting and printing in tribal languages).

I enjoyed how the author opened many chapters with personal experiences. They ranged from traveling by camel in the Sahara to drinking chicha (homemade corn beer) in the isolated town of Pocona, Bolivia, to recounting experiences with the Kuna of the San Blas Islands of Panama, the only Native Americans visited by Christopher Columbus that are still alive. A great book.

This is another brilliant, fascinating, and very entertaining book by Jack Weatherford. Like Indian Givers, each chapter of Savages and Civilization would make a documentary program all its own. Once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. This author is like the anthropology and history professors you wish you'd had, rolled into one. His writing style stirs the imagination and his thoughts and facts are easy to visualize. If you like your anthropology told with good stories, you can't miss with this book.

I have taken one class from Prof. Weatherford, and plan on taking another this coming year. He is one of the most popular and well-liked professors at Macalester College because he is, in a word, fascinating. He combines an immense field of knowledge with an engrossing lecture and discussion style. He does the same in this book, penning a book that both broadens awareness and understanding, and entertains. I would often intend to read one chapter then go to bed, but would end up many chapters later wondering what happened to the time. If you want a book which is written for those not steeped in anthropology, and which contains a great amount of educational material of interest to people from all fields of study and interests, this is an excellent book to buy, read, and enjoy.

Educational and entertaining. If you love this, you will love his new book about "Genghis Khan". This complete and concise reintroduction of 850 years of glorified Mongol history will be shocking and eye opening experiences for you. According to his long journey of tireless research, Genghis Khan had established our modern civilization. What a history, what a extraordinary work.

I have taken one class from Prof. Weatherford, and plan on taking another this coming year. He is one of the most popular and well-liked professors at Macalester College because he is, in a word, fascinating. He combines an immense field of knowledge with an engrossing lecture and discussion style. He does the same in this book, penning a book that both broadens awareness and understanding, and entertains. I would often intend to read one chapter then go to bed, but would end up many chapters later wondering what happened to the time. If you want a book which is written for those not steeped in anthropology, and which contains a great amount of educational material of interest to people from all fields of study and interests, this is an excellent book to buy, read, and enjoy.

I have given away at least 200 copies of this book to clients and friends. It is so good in describing the underlying principles of why the Internet took off and Facebook took off, yet its examples are drawn from history long before either was a reality. Just a spectacular read for anyone who wants to understand the future based on the past.

If you want to take a journey across both space and time without moving from the chair that you are seated in, then read this book. Instead of taking a bird's eye view of civilizations like most authors, Jack Weatherford builds his story from the ground up. We read about the fascinating habits of people that lived a mere hundred years ago. We also read about modern man's crimes towards those people. This book is about the journey of man from being a hunter gatherer, to a farmer, and then to a city dweller, and now man is attempting to move away from the cities that he built, an act that is visible in the rise of modern suburban areas. Where do we go from there? Is there a way forward? Or will civilization destroy itself because, for the first time in its history, it has the tools that allow it to do so? Unfortunately the author does not answer these questions, he only asks them. Nevertheless, the journey of man is definitely interesting and this book tells it in the simplest, yet most exciting way.

It is no easy feat to define savages and civilisation literally. The author brought us back right to the origin, ie. the formation of continents, the climate changes, changes of food chain, the formation and usage of tools and fire which subsequently change homo sapien's nature to hunt and forage into farming. With gradual changes of homo sapien's tendency of mobilisation into stagnation, infrastructure is needed to sustain their activities and thus, the formation of cities. The author used examples from Australia, Russia, South America, Pacific Islands, et cetera to illustrate to us the points that he was making and I find those components to be of interesting read. He continued on to explain about what we have known all along about people from countryside that shifts in huge numbers to the cities for better opportunities to the extent that it overextends the infrastructure and thus, the destruction of the Great Nature. Subsequently, the original city slickers move further away from the degradation that has become of the city. With advent of sophisticated technology, those city slickers are not worse off as they can both play and work at the same place nowadays. What he found shocking was the so called "tribes" or gangs that formed themselves in cities to carve up their own territories. His example was relevant and notorious ie. Washington D.C. Continuing on, tribes no longer need to be held in one place as technology allows the tribes to continue embracing their own cultures no matter where they are. For example, Asians that are living in USA are still able to watch TV programs from China through sattelite TV these days. He striked to the heart of the matter when he said that indigenous people are viewed like curios nowadays where people visiting specially allotted reserves to view how they live their day to day lives. The answers are not found from there but rather, from the displaced indigenous people that are trying to sustain their livelihood in the big and hostile cities. To summarise the book, it is to say that the countryside people have an uneasy relationship with the city people and vice versa. It is no longer relevant to separate people through religious affiliations, cultural differences, national borders. With the emergence of globalisation, it is becoming clearer that we are neither countryside nor city people but simply people. And to ensure the survivor of our species, we simply need to respect one another. A simple lesson of live and let lived. Alas, very few people take heed of this lesson these days. Highly recommended.

I have taken one class from Prof. Weatherford, and plan on taking another this coming year. He is one of the most popular and well-liked professors at Macalester College because he is, in a word, fascinating. He combines an immense field of knowledge with an engrossing lecture and discussion style. He does the same in this book, penning a book that both broadens awareness and understanding, and entertains. I would often intend to read one chapter then go to bed, but would end up many chapters later wondering what happened to the time. If you want a book which is written for those not steeped in anthropology, and which contains a great amount of educational material of interest to people from all fields of study and interests, this is an excellent book to buy, read, and enjoy.