We all know that for various nationalities in different regions of the world. .In the 13,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age, some parts of the world developed into industrial societies with metal tools and writing, others developed only into agricultural societies without writing, and still others retained the use of Stone hunter-gatherer societies.This historical difference casts a lasting shadow over the modern world, as written societies that used metal tools conquered or wiped out other types of society.Although these differences constitute the most basic facts of world history, the reasons for these differences have always been uncertain and disputed.The puzzling question of the origin of these differences was posed to me in a simple and personal form 25 years ago.

In July 1972, I was walking on the sandy beach of this tropical island of New Guinea, where I was studying the evolution of birds.I had heard of a well-known local politician named Yeli before this, and he was traveling in this area at this time.Yali and I happened to be walking in the same direction that day, and he overtook me.We walked together for an hour, talking all the time. Yali exudes the temperament and vitality of a leader.His eyes were shining with a charming light.He talked about himself with confidence, but he also asked a lot of probing questions and listened to me with rapt attention.Our conversation began with the rapid developments in politics that were on the minds of every New Guinean at the time.Yeli's country, now called Papua New Guinea, was still a trustee territory of the United Nations, administered by Australia, but independence was a matter of time.Yali told me that his task was to prepare the native people for self-government.

After a while, Yeli changed the subject and began to question me.He had never been outside of New Guinea, and his highest education was secondary school, but he had an insatiable curiosity.First, he wanted to know about my research work on the birds of New Guinea (including how much I was paid to do it).I just told him how different groups of birds colonized New Guinea over the course of millions of years.Then he asked me how the ancestors of his people arrived in New Guinea in the past tens of thousands of years, and how the white Europeans colonized New Guinea in the past 200 years. The conversation was always friendly, although we both understood that the relationship between the two societies that Yali and I represented was strained.Two centuries ago, all New Guineans were still "living in the Stone Age".That is, they still used similar stone tools that had been replaced by metal tools in Europe thousands of years ago, and they did not live in villages organized under centralized political authority.White men came, established a centralized government, and brought everything from steel axes, matches, and medicines to clothing, soft drinks, and umbrellas, and New Guineans immediately recognized the value of these items.In New Nea, all these items are collectively referred to as "goods".

Many white immigrants openly held New Guineans in contempt, calling them "primitives."Even the most incompetent among the New Guineans' white "masters" (as they were called until 1972) had a far higher standard of living than New Guineans, or even extremes like Yeli. A charismatic politician.Yet Yali has quizzed as many whites as he did me, and I have quizzed as many New Guineans.He and I both knew full well that New Guineans were generally at least as intelligent as Europeans.Yerry must have thought about all this, because he gave me another insightful glance with his piercing eyes and asked me, "Why do you white people make so much goods and ship it to New York?" Guinea, and we niggers have hardly any goods of our own."

It's a simple but to the point question, as Yali understands.Yes, there is still a huge difference between the way of life of the average New Guinean and the way of life of the average European or American.Similar differences also distinguish the way of life of other peoples around the world.There must be important reasons for these large differences that one might think are obvious. Yali's seemingly simple question, however, is a difficult one to answer.I couldn't answer it at the time.Professional historians still disagree on the solution to this problem: most don't even ask such questions anymore.In the years since Yali and I had that conversation, I have researched and written about questions about human evolution, history, and other aspects of language.This book, written 25 years later, is an attempt to answer Yali's question.

While Yali's question concerns only differences in the way of life of New Guineans and white Europeans, it can be generalized to relate to a larger set of disparities in the modern world.Peoples from Eurasia, especially those still living in Europe and East Asia, and those who migrated to North America, controlled the wealth and power of the world.Other peoples, including most Africans, had escaped European colonial rule but remained far behind in wealth and power.There are also some peoples, such as the aborigines of Australia, the Americas, and the southernmost tip of Africa, who are no longer even the masters of their own land, but have been massacred, conquered, and sometimes even exterminated by European colonialists.

Thus, the question of difference in the modern world can again be formulated systematically as follows.Why is the distribution of wealth and power the way it is and not some other way?For example, why didn't Indians, Africans, and Aboriginal Australians kill, conquer, or exterminate Europeans and Asians? For this question, we can look back at history without difficulty.Beginning in AD 1500, when European colonial expansion around the world was just beginning, the peoples on different continents were already vastly different in technology and political organization.Much of Europe, Asia, and North America became the bases of metal-armed nations or empires, some of which were already beginning to industrialize.Two Indian peoples, the Aztecs and the Incas, ruled over empires that used stone tools.Some areas south of the Sahara Desert were divided into small iron-working nations or tribes ruled by chieftains.Most of the other peoples—including all those in Australia and New Guinea, many of the Pacific islands, much of the Americas, and small parts of sub-Saharan Africa—were farming tribes, and even still hunter-gatherers who used stone tools. a living group.

Of course, this technological and political difference from 1500 AD is the direct cause of the inequality in the modern world.Empires wielding iron weapons were able to conquer or exterminate tribes wielding stone and wooden weapons.But how did the world become what it was in 1500 AD? For this question, we can once again effortlessly look back at earlier history, based on historical records and archaeological discoveries.Until the end of the last Ice Age around 11,000 B.C., various groups on every continent remained hunter-gatherers.Different rates of development on different continents from 11,000 BC to 1500 AD account for the technological and political differences in 1500 AD.Although Australian aborigines and American Indians still live on hunter-gatherers, much of Eurasia, the Americas, and many parts of sub-Saharan Africa have gradually developed agriculture, animal husbandry, metallurgy, and complex political organizations. .Some parts of Eurasia and one part of the Americas independently invented writing.Each of these new developments, however, arose earlier in Eurasia than anywhere else.For example, the large-scale production of bronzes was just beginning in the Andes of South America in the centuries before 1500 AD, but it had already begun in some parts of Eurasia more than 4000 years ago.European explorers first came into contact with the Tasmanians in AD 1642, when their stone tool-making techniques were simpler than those commonly used in the Upper Paleolithic in Europe tens of thousands of years ago.

In this way, we can finally reformulate the differences in the modern world in other terms as follows: Why did humans develop at such different rates on different continents?This difference in speed constitutes the broadest pattern of history and is the subject of my book. Although the book is ultimately about historical and prehistoric issues, its subject matter is not only of academic but practical and political importance as well.The history of interactions between different peoples shaped the modern world through conquest, epidemics, and genocidal massacres.These conflicts had reverberations that have persisted through the centuries and are still alive and well today in some of the most troubled parts of the world.

For example, vast areas of Africa are still struggling with the legacy of modern colonialism.In other areas—including Central America, Mexico, Peru, New Caledonia, and much of the former Soviet Union, as well as parts of Indonesia—social unrest or guerrilla warfare has turned even more native populations against A government controlled by the descendants of the conquerors.Many other native populations—such as natives of Hawaii, natives of Australia, natives of Siberia, and the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina—had been greatly reduced in number and are now greatly outnumbered by descendants of the invaders.Although they were thus prevented from waging civil war, they became increasingly assertive in asserting their rights.

In addition to these current political and economic repercussions from past conflicts between peoples, there are current linguistic repercussions—notably the imminent extinction of most of the 6,000 living languages ​​in the modern world, and the English, Chinese, Russian, and several other languages ​​whose speakers have grown considerably in recent centuries.All of these problems in the modern world are due to the different historical trajectories implied in the Yali problem. Before looking for an answer to Yali's question, we should pause to consider some of the arguments against discussing it at all.There are several reasons why some people get angry when they see someone else just asking this question. One objection is as follows.If we succeed in showing how one people can rule over another, does this not justify that domination?Does this mean that this outcome is inevitable and that it may be futile to try to change it today?This objection is based on a general tendency to confuse the account of causes with the justification or recognition of effects.How to make use of historical expositions is a question quite different from the expositions themselves.In an effort to change an outcome, understanding is more often employed than reproducing or maintaining it.This is why psychologists strive to understand the minds of murderers and rapists, why social historians strive to understand the Holocaust, and why psychiatrists strive to understand the causes of human disease.These people don't investigate to justify murder, rape, genocide, and disease.Instead, they want to use their knowledge of the causal chain to break the chain. Second, does answering Yali's question necessarily involve a Eurocentric approach to history, a glorification of Western Europeans, and an obsession with the prominence of Western Europe and a Europeanized America in the modern world?Is this prominence a blip of the past few centuries, now being dimmed by the rise of Japan and Southeast Asia?In fact, most of this book will be dealing with certain peoples, not Europeans.We're not just focusing on the interactions between Europeans and non-Europeans, but also the interactions between different non-European peoples—particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, Indigenous interactions within and within Indonesia and New Guinea.We are by no means trying to glorify peoples from Western Europe, but to see that the most basic elements of their civilization were developed by other peoples living elsewhere and imported into Western Europe. Third, do words like "civilization" and words like "rise of civilization" convey a false impression that civilization is good and that hunter-gatherer tribal peoples are miserable, whereas the past 13,000 Years of history have moved towards the greater good of mankind.In fact, I don't take it for granted that industrialized nations are necessarily better than hunter-gatherers. , does not think that giving up the hunter-gatherer lifestyle in exchange for a state status based on the use of iron represents "progress", nor does it believe that this kind of progress has brought more and more happiness to mankind.My impression, based on my experience living in American cities and in New Guinea villages, is that the so-called well-being of civilization consists of both positive and negative factors.For example, citizens of modern industrialized nations enjoy better medical care, are less likely to be murdered, and live longer than hunter-gatherer tribes, but have less social support from friends and extended family. Much less.My motivation for investigating such geographic differences in human societies is not to glorify one type of society and demean another, but simply to understand what happened historically. Does Yali's question really need another book to answer?Do we already know the answer?If so, what is the answer?Probably the most common explanation assumes, implicitly or explicitly, biological differences between peoples.In the centuries after AD 1500, as European explorers recognized wide differences in technology and political organization among the world's peoples, they took it for granted that these differences arose from differences in natural ability.With the advent of Darwin's theory, some of the original explanations took on new meanings in terms of natural selection and evolutionary inheritance.Technically primitive races are thought to be the evolutionary remnants of humans inherited from ape-like ancestors.The replacement of these races by immigrants from industrialized societies is a case of survival of the fittest.With the subsequent rise of genetics, these explanations were rephrased again in terms of genetics.From a genetic point of view, Europeans are considered to be smarter than Africans, and especially compared to Aboriginal Australians. Today, some people in Western society are openly criticizing racism.Yet many (perhaps most) Westerners continue to accept racist explanations either privately or subconsciously.In Japan and many other countries, this explanation is still being offered openly and without guilt.Even educated white Americans, Europeans and Australians, when the topic of Aboriginal Australians is brought up, always think that there is something primitive about Aboriginal Australians.They definitely look different than white people.Many of the surviving descendants of these aborigines survived European colonization but now find it difficult to succeed economically in white Australian society. A plausible argument goes like this: white immigrants to Australia established a literate, industrialized, politically centralized democracy based on metal tools and food production, all against The colonization of a continent was completed within a hundred years, and the indigenous people living on this continent have been hunter-gatherers without metal tools for at least 40,000 years.These are two consecutive experiments in human development, in the same environment, the only variable being the people who inhabit the environment.Does it need further proof that the differences between Aboriginal Australian and European societies are produced by differences in the peoples themselves? The objections to such racist explanations are not just because they are distasteful, but also because they are wrong.Humans differ in intelligence, but there is no solid evidence that such differences parallel technological differences.In fact, as I will show shortly, modern "Stone Age" tribes are usually probably more intelligent than industrialized peoples, or at least as intelligent.While this may sound absurd, as we shall see in Chapter 15, white immigrants to Australia were generally credited with establishing a literate industrialized society with the other virtues mentioned above. well deserved.Moreover, until recently technologically primitive tribes, such as the aborigines of Australia and the New Guineans, were generally able to master industrial technology if given the opportunity. Some cognitive psychologists have made great efforts to study the differences in IQ between ethnic groups from different geographical regions living in the same country.In particular, there are many white American psychologists who have spent the past few decades trying to demonstrate that African-American blacks are inherently inferior in intelligence to European-American whites.However, it is well known that the two ethnic groups used for comparison are very different in terms of social environment and educational opportunities.This fact makes testing the hypothesis that differences in intelligence cause differences in skill doubly difficult.First, even our cognitive abilities as adults are heavily influenced by our social environment, which we have experienced as children, making it difficult to detect any influence of innate genetic differences.Second, tests of cognitive ability (like IQ tests) tend to measure cultural learning rather than pure innate intelligence, whatever that may be.Because of the undoubted influence of childhood environment and acquired knowledge on IQ test results, efforts by psychologists to date have failed to find convincing evidence that non-white people's IQ is subdued. A genetic defect taken for granted. My perspective on this controversy is the result of 33 years of working with New Guineans in their untouched societies.From the time I first started working with New Guineans, I had the impression that they were generally smarter, more alert, more expressive, and more aware of the things and people around them than the average European or American. care.For some tasks, one can quite well think that it reflects some aspects of brain function, such as the ability to draw a picture of an unfamiliar environment in the mind.New Guineans appear to be largely better at this job than Westerners.Of course, New Guineans often do poorly at jobs that Westerners have been trained to do from childhood that New Guineans have never done.So when unschooled New Guineans from remote villages come into town, they look dumb to Westerners; whereas, when I'm in the jungle with New Guineans, I act like I can't even do simple things. Work (such as walking along a bush path or building a shelter) is not up to the task.At times like these, I always know how dumb I look to New Guineans.New Guineans were trained for these jobs from a young age, but I was never. There are two reasons why I think the impression that New Guineans are smarter than Westerners may be true.First, for thousands of years, Westerners have lived in densely populated societies with central governments, police, and the rule of law.In these societies, contagious epidemics among dense populations (such as smallpox) have historically been the leading cause of death, murders have been relatively rare, and states of war have been the exception rather than the rule.Most Europeans who escaped a deadly infectious disease also escaped some other underlying cause of death and passed on their genes to future generations.Today, most surviving babies in the West have similarly escaped deadly infectious diseases and are passed on to the next generation in the same way, regardless of their intelligence or the genes they carry.In contrast, New Guineans lived in a society where the diseases that were prevalent in dense populations could not develop because of the small population.Instead, murder, prolonged tribal warfare, accidents, and problems with obtaining food contributed to the traditionally high death rates among New Guineans. In traditional New Guinea societies, intelligent people were more likely than less intelligent people to escape the causes of high mortality.In traditional European societies, however, the disparities in mortality from epidemic diseases had little to do with intelligence but with genetic resistance that depended on details of body chemistry.For example, people with blood type B or O are more resistant to smallpox than people with blood type A.That is, natural selection promoting genes for intelligence is likely to be far more ruthless in New Guinea than in a densely populated, politically complex society, where natural selection on the chemical makeup of the body would have been more potent. Besides this genetic reason, there is a second reason why New Guineans might be smarter than Westerners.Children in modern Europe and the United States spend a great deal of time passively receiving the entertainment provided by television, radio, and movies.In the average American household, the TV is on seven hours a day.In contrast, traditional New Guinea children had little opportunity for such passive entertainment, and instead spent almost all of their waking hours engaged in active activities, such as talking or playing with other children or adults. .Almost all research on child development emphasizes the role of childhood stimulation and activity in promoting intellectual development, while highlighting the irreversible intellectual disability associated with reduced childhood stimulation.This influence undoubtedly provides a non-genetic component to the superior general mental functioning exhibited by New Guineans. That is to say, New Guineans may be genetically superior to Westerners in terms of intelligence, and they are certainly superior to Westerners in escaping the extremely unfavorable conditions for growth in which most children in industrialized societies live today. grown up under conditions.Of course, there is nothing about any New Guinean intellectual disadvantage that can be answered Yali's question.These two factors, genetics and childhood upbringing, may have distinguished not only New Guineans from Westerners, but also hunter-gatherers and technologically primitive members of societies from technologically advanced members in general. .Therefore, the assumption that racism has always been made must be turned on its head.Why did Europeans, despite their genetic disadvantages, and (in modern times) their undoubted upbringing disadvantages, end up producing so much of the goods?And as for the New Guineans, despite my belief in their higher intelligence, why were they so technologically primitive in the end? A genetic explanation isn't the only possible answer to Yali's question.Another explanation popular with the Nordics appeals to imagined climatic effects, saying that the cold climate of their homeland stimulates creativity and energy, while the hot, humid tropical climate stimulates creativity and energy. Energy is inhibiting.Perhaps this seasonally variable climate at high latitudes presents more varied challenges than the constant, non-seasonal tropical climate.Perhaps colder climates demanded greater inventiveness in order to survive, since one had to build warm dwellings and sew warm clothes, whereas in the tropics one could survive with lesser shelter and no clothing.Or, the argument could be reversed to reach the same conclusion: the long winters at high latitudes gave people plenty of time to sit at home and invent. While this explanation has been popular before, it is equally vulnerable to scrutiny.As we shall see, until the last millennium ago the Nordic peoples made no vital contribution to Eurasian civilization; Some advanced things (agriculture, the wheel, writing, and metallurgy) developed in the warmer parts of the subcontinent.In the New World, the cold regions at high latitudes are even more of a backward region for human beings.The only Native American society to have invented writing arose in Mexico south of the Tropic of Cancer; the oldest pottery in the New World comes from near the equator in tropical South America; Historically prominent Maya societies in the tropical Yucatan Peninsula and Guatemala during the first millennium AD. The third answer to Yali's question raises the question of the importance of lowland valleys in so-called dry climates, since productive agriculture in such places depends on large-scale irrigation systems, which in turn require centralized government agencies.This explanation is proposed because of the undeniable fact that the earliest known empires and writing systems arose in the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and the Nile in Egypt.In several other parts of the world, including the Indus River basin in the Indian subcontinent, the Yellow and Yangtze River basins in China, the Maya-inhabited lowlands of Central America, and the coastal deserts of Peru, water systems also appear to be closely related to centralized political organization. However, exhaustive archaeological research shows that complex irrigation systems did not come with centralized government agencies, but rather after a considerable time later.That is, first there was political centralization for some reason, and then it was possible to build complex irrigation systems.None of the crucial developments that preceded political centralization in these parts of the world had any connection with river basins or complex irrigation systems.For example, food production and rural life in the Fertile Crescent arose from hills and mountains, not lowland river valleys.Some 3,000 years after rural food production began to flourish in the foothills of the Fertile Crescent, the Nile Valley remained a culturally backward region.The river basins of the American Southwest eventually supported irrigated agriculture and complex societies, but only after many of the developments on which the societies depended were imported from Mexico.The river valleys of southeastern Australia are still occupied by tribal societies without agriculture. Yet another explanation cites immediate factors that enabled Europeans to slaughter or subjugate other peoples—especially European guns, infectious diseases, steel tools, and manufactured goods.This interpretation is correct because it is obvious that these factors were the direct cause of the European conquest.However, this hypothesis is incomplete because it still only provides an approximate (early stage) explanation for identifying the immediate cause.It makes one want to search for the ultimate reason: Why did the Europeans, instead of Africans or Indians, finally bring guns, vicious germs and steel? As far as determining the ultimate reasons for Europe's conquest of the New World, although some progress had been made, Africa remained a major problem.Hominids evolved longest on the continent of Africa, where anatomically modern humans may have originated, and where endemic diseases such as malaria or yellow fever killed European explorers.If a long head start is worth anything, why didn't guns and steel come to Africa first, allowing Africans and their germs to conquer Europe?At the same time, what is used to explain why Aboriginal Australians failed to move beyond the hunter-gatherer stage using stone tools? The problems that arise in the comparison of human societies around the world have attracted great attention from historians and geographers.The most famous modern illustration of this effort is the twelve volumes of his Historical Studies.Toynbee was particularly excited about the 23 advanced civilized peoples, 22 of which were written and 19 were Eurasian peoples.He was less interested in prehistory and simpler, nonliterate societies.Yet the roots of inequality in the modern world go back to prehistoric times.So Toynbee doesn't ask Yali's kind of question, and doesn't take seriously what I think is the broadest pattern of history.Other available books on world history also focus on the advanced, written Eurasian civilizations of the past 5,000 years; these books make very brief references to pre-Columbian Indian civilizations , except for recent interactions with the civilized peoples of Eurasia, they discuss the rest of the world even more briefly.After Toynbee's attempt, the world's comprehensive study of historical causality has been greeted with cold shoulder by most historians, as it poses an apparently intractable problem. Experts from several disciplines provide a globally integrated study of their problems.In particular, ecological geographers, cultural anthropologists, biologists who study the domestication of animals and plants, and scholars who study the impact of infectious diseases on history have made useful contributions in this regard.These studies have called attention to parts of the puzzle, but they have provided only fragments of the necessary comprehensive research that has been lacking. Therefore, there is no generally accepted answer to Yali's question.On the one hand, this approximation is clear: some peoples had guns, germs, steel, and other factors of political and economic influence before others; factors of influence.on the other hand.The ultimate explanation—for example, why bronzes arose very early in some parts of Eurasia, late in localized areas of the New World, and never in Aboriginal Australia—remains unclear . Our current lack of such an ultimate explanation leaves a huge knowledge gap, as the broadest historical patterns remain so unexplained.Much more serious, however, is the moral gap that has not been filled.What is most obvious to everyone, blatantly racist or not, is that historically things have been different for different peoples.Modern America is a society created on the European model, occupying land taken from the Indians and absorbing the descendants of millions of black sub-Saharan Africans brought to the Americas as slaves.Modern Europe is not a society shaped by black sub-Saharan Africans who brought millions of Indians into Europe as slaves. This outcome is completely one-sided: it is not the case here that 51 percent of the Americas, Australia, and Africa were conquered by Europeans, while 49 percent of Europe was conquered by Indians, Aboriginal Australians, or Africans.The entire modern world has been shaped by one-sided outcomes.These results must have unalterable explanations that should be more fundamental than the details of who happened to win a certain battle or who invented what at a certain time hundreds of years ago. It seems logical to assume that historical patterns reflect innate differences among peoples.Of course, we were taught that it was rude to say that publicly.We read about specialized studies claiming to demonstrate inborn differences; we also read rebuttals claiming that these studies are fallacious about specialization.We see in everyday life that, centuries after conquest and the slave trade, some conquered peoples still constitute the underclass.This too, we are told, is not to be attributed to any biological defect but to social disadvantage and limited opportunities. Still, we have to wonder.What we see all the time are all those striking and persistent differences in ethnic status.We are assured that this plausible explanation of inequality in the world since AD ​​1500 is wrong, but we are not told what the correct explanation is.Until we have some sort of convincing, exhaustive, and agreed-upon explanation for broad patterns in history, most people will continue to think that the biological explanations for racism are correct after all.To me, that seems to be the strongest argument for writing this book. 新闻记者总是要求作者用一句话把篇幅很长的书加以概括。对本书来说，这样的一句话就是：“不同民族的历史遵循不同的道路前进，其原因是民族环境的差异，而不是民族自身在生物学上的差异。” 当然，环境地理和生物地理影响社会发展，这并不是什么新的观念。然而在今天，这种观点己得不到历史学家们的青睐；它被认为是错误的或过分简单化的，或者被讽刺为环境决定论而不屑一顾，或者把企图了解世界范国内的差异这整个问题看得太难而束之高阁。然而，地理显然对历史产生了某种影响；有待回答的问题是这种影响的程度如何，以及地理是否能够说明历史的广泛模式。 由于有几门从表面上看似乎与人类历史毫不相干的科学学科所提供的新的知识，以新的眼光来看待这些问题的时机己经成熟了。这些学科首先包括遗传学、分子生物学和涉及农作物及其原始野种的生物地理学；这些学科再加上涉及家畜及其原始野种的行为生态学；研穷人类病菌及有关动物病菌的分子生物学；研究人类疾病的流行病学；人类遗传学；语言学；对所有大陆和主要岛屿进行的考古研究；以及对技术、文字和政治组织的历史研究。 这种学科的多样性向想要写一本书来回答耶利的问题的未来作者提出了一些问题。这样的作者必须具有包括以上各学科的广博的专业知识，这样才能把相关的各种先进知识加以综合。每个大陆的历史和史前史都必须同样地加以综合。这本书的主要内容是历史，但所用的方法则是科学的——尤其是诸如演化生物学和地质学之类历史科学的方法。这样的作者必须根据直接体验来了解一系列人类社会，从狩猎采集社会到现代的太空时代文明，都要有所了解。 这些条件初看起来似乎是要求多个作者协同工作。然而，这种办法从—开始就注定要失败，因为这个问题的实质是要建立一种统一的综合体系。这种考虑就规定了只能有一个作者，尽管这样做会引起种种困难。不可避免的是，这个作者为了从许多学科吸收材料将不得不浑身冒汗，并且将会需要许多同事对他进行指导。 甚至在耶利于1972年向我提出他的问题之前，我的经历已经使我涉足这些学科中的几门。我的母亲是教师兼语言学家；我的父亲是儿童遗传疾病专科医师。由于有了我的父亲做榜样，我怀着当医生的志向完成了我的小学和中学学业。在7岁时，我还成了一个狂热的观察和研究野鸟的人。因此，在我大学本科的最后一年，我很容易地就从起初想要从事医务工作这个目标转向生物研究这个目标。然而，从小学一直到大学，我的训练主要在语言、历史和写作方面。甚至在决定要取得生理学博士学位之后，我在研究院的第一年还差点放弃科学而去做一个语言学家。 1961年我完成博士学业后，就把我的科学研究分成两个领域去进行：一个是分子生理学，一个是演化生物学和生物地理学。演化生物学是一门历史科学，只能使用一些不同于实验科学的方法，这对于我写作本书却带来了意想不到的帮助。要设计出一种研究人类历史的方法会有许多困难，但我在这方面的经验使我对这些困难了然于胸。从1958年到1962年，我在欧洲生活，我的一些欧洲朋友的生活曾经遭到20世纪历史的严重伤害，生活在他们中间使我开始更加认真地思考在历史的展开中因果链是在如何起作用的。 在过去的33年中，我作为演化生物学家的现场调查工作，使我同范围广泛的人类社会产生了密切的接触。我的专业是鸟类演化，我在南美、南部非洲、印度尼西亚、澳大利亚，特别是新几内亚，曾经做过这方面的研究。通过同这些地区的土著人在一起生活，我熟悉了许多技术上原始的社会，从狩猎采集社会到不久前还依靠石器的部落农民和渔民们的社会。因此，大多数有文化的人认为不可思议的、遥远的史前期生活方式，却是我的生活中最鲜明生动的部分。新几内亚尽管只占世界陆地面积的很小一部分，但它所包含的人类多样性却大得不成比例。在现代世界上的6000种语言中，有1000种只在新几内亚使用。在我研究新几内亚鸟类的过程中，由于需要用近100种新几内亚语言列出一些鸟类的俗名，我对语言的兴趣被重新激发出来了。 所有这些兴趣产生了我最近的一本书，这是对人类进化的一种非技术性的描述，书名叫做《第三种黑猩猩》。这本书的第十四章叫做《意外的征服者》，是试图了解欧洲人同印第安人接触所产生的后果。在我完成这本书之后，我认识到无论是史前时代还是现代，民族之间的接触产生了同样的问题。我明白，我在那本书的第十四章中努力解决的问题，实质上就是1972年耶利问我的那个问题，只不过把问题搬到世界上的一个不同的地方罢了。就这样，在许多朋友的帮助下，我终于可以试一试去满足耶利的——也是我自己的好奇心。 本书分为4个部分。第一部分题为《从伊甸园到卡哈马卡》，它由3章组成。第一章提供了一次关于人类进化和历史的旋风式的旅行，从大约700万年前我们刚从类人猿分化出来时开始，一直延续到大约13000年前上—次冰期结束为止。我们将追踪人类的祖先从我们在非洲的发祥地散布到其他大陆。以便弄清楚在那些常常用“文明的兴起”—语来加以概括的事件开始前世界是什么情形。结果表明，某些大陆上的人类发展经过一段时间后取得了对其他大陆上的人类发展的领先优势。 第二章简要地考察了岛屿环境在较小的时空范国内对历史的影响，从而使我们为探究过去13000年中大陆环境对历史的影响作好准备。当大约3200年前波利尼西亚人祖先向太平详迁移的时候，他们碰到了一些和他们原来环境大不相同的岛屿。在几干年之内，波利尼西亚人祖先建立的这个社会在这些形形色色的岛屿上产生了一系列子社会，从狩猎采集部落到原始帝国，形形色色，应有尽有。这种辐射性进化可以起到模式的作用，用来说明自上次冰期结束以来，在不同的大陆上时间更长、规模更大、但更少为人所了解的社会辐射性进化，为什么有的成了狩猎采集部落，有的却成了帝国。 第三章通过同时代目击者的描述，再讲一讲历史上最具戏剧性的诸如此类的遭遇，从而向我们介绍来自不同大陆的各民族之间的冲突。历史上的这次遭遇是：独立的印加帝国的末代皇帝阿塔瓦尔帕在自己的整个军队纳护卫下，在秘鲁城市卡哈马卡被弗兰西斯科·皮萨罗和他率领的一小撮西班牙入侵者俘虏。我们可以确定一些近似因素的锁链，正是这些因素使皮萨罗得以俘虏阿塔瓦尔帕，并在欧洲人对美洲印第安人的征服中发生了作用。这些因素包括西班牙的病菌、马匹、文化、政治组织和技术（尤其是造船和武器制造）。这种对近似原因的分析是本书中容易做到的部分；困难的部分是确定终极原因，因为正是终极原因产生了近似原因，产生了实际结果，而不是产生可能相反的结果，即阿塔瓦尔帕到马德里俘虏了西班牙国王查理—世。 第二部分题为（粮食生产的出现和传播），包括第四章到第十章。这—部分专门讨论我认为是只重要的一组终极原因。第四章概述了粮食生产——即通过农业种植和畜牧来生产食物，而不是靠狩猎和采集野生食物——是如何最终产生了使皮萨罗取得胜利的直接因素。但是粮食生产的出现情况在全世界是不同的。我们将要在第五章看到，世界上某些地区的民族靠自己来发展粮食生产；另一些族群在史前期从这些独立的粮食生产中心学会了粮食生产；还有—些族群在史前期既不发展粮食生产也不从别处学会粮食生产，而是直到现在仍然过着狩猎采集生活。第六章研究了只是在某些地区促使狩猎采集的生活方式向粮食生产转变的诸多因素。 接着，第七、八、九章说明在史前时代农作物和牲畜是如何从原来的野生植物和动物经过驯化而来的，而做这种驯化工作的早期农民和牧人连做梦也没有想到会有这样的结果。可以用作驯化的当地一批批动植物在地理上的差异，有助于说明为什么只有几个地区成为独立的粮食生产中心，为什么粮食生产在某些地区比在另一些地区出现得早。从原来的这几个中心、粮食生产向某些地区的传播比向另一些地区的传播要迅速得多。造成粮食生产传播速度差异的一个重大因案原来竟是大陆的轴线方向：欧亚大陆主要是东西向，而美洲和非洲则主要是南北向（第十章）。 因此，第三章概述了欧洲征服美洲印第安人的直接因素，第四章则概述了这些因素从粮食生产这个终极原因发展而来。第三部分（《从粮食生产到枪炮、病茵与钢铁》，第十一章到第十四章）从密集人口所持有的病菌的演化开始，对从终极原因到近似原因的联系进行了考查（十一章）。欧亚大陆的病菌杀死的印第安人和其他非欧亚大陆民族，比欧亚大陆的枪炮或钢铁武器所杀死的要多得多。相反，在新大陆，很少有或根本没有任何危险的病菌在等待未来的欧洲征服者。为什么病菌的交流这样不相等？在这里，近来分子生物学的研究成果在把病菌和粮食生产的出现相联系方面是富于启发性的，而这两者的联系在欧亚大陆要远远超过美洲。 另一条因果链是从粮食生产到文字，文字可能是过去几千年中最重要的—项发明（十二章）。在人类历史上，文字只经历过少数几次进化，而发明文字的地区又是各自区域中粮食生产出现最早的地方。所有其他有文字的社会也都经历了同样的进化，或者是由于文字的传播，或者是由于文化的传播，而这种文化又是来自最初的少数几个中心之一。因此，对于研究世界史的人来说，文字这一现象对研究另一组重要的因果关系尤其有用，即地理对思想和发明的传播的方便程度所具有的影响。 适用于文字的情况也适用于技术（第十三章）。一个关键的问题是技术创新是不是完全依赖于少数发明家——天才，依赖于许多具有特质的文化因素，以致不可能去了解技术的世界模式。事实上，我们将会看到，奇怪的是，大量的这类文化因素使了解技术的世界模式变得更容易了，而不是变得更困难了。粮食生产使农民能够生产出多余的粮食，从而使农业社会得以养活专职的从事手工艺的专门人材、因为这些人的工作不是种植他们自己吃的粮食，而是发展技术。 除了养活抄写员和发明家外，粮食生产还使农民能够养活政治家（第十四章）。以狩猎和采集为生的流动人群相对而言都是平等主义者，他们的政治活动范围局限于自己的地区以及改变与邻近人群的结盟关系。随着稠密的、定居的、从事粮食生产的人口的出现，酋长、国王和官员也出现了。这种行政体系不但对管理幅员广阔、人口众多的领地是至关重要的，而且对维持常备军、派遣探险舰队和组织征服战争也是至关重要的。 第四部分（《在5章中环游世界》，第十五章至第十九章）把第二部分和第三部分所讲的内容应用于每个大陆和一些重要的岛屿。第十五章研究了澳大利亚本身的历史，以及原来和澳大利亚相连、属于同一大陆的新几内亚这个大岛的历史。澳大利亚是近代技术最简陋的人类社会所在地，也是其自身没有发展粮食生产的唯一大陆。澳大利亚的情况是对关于人类社会的洲际差异理论的一次决定性检验。我们会看到，甚至在邻近的新几内亚的大多数族群成了粮食生产者的时候，为什么澳大利亚的土著却仍然以狩猎采集为生。 第十六和第十七章把澳大利亚和新几内亚的发展结合成整个地区的一幅画面，这个地区包括东亚大陆和太平洋诸岛。中国粮食生产的出现，引起了史前期人口或文化特征的几次大迁移，或两者的同时迁移。其中有一次迁移发生在中国本土，造成了我们今天所知道的中国这个政治和文化现象。另一次迁移在几乎整个热带东南亚地区导致了最后来自中国南部的中国农民取代了以狩猎采集为生的本地人。还有一次迁移是的扩张，这次迁移同样取代了菲律宾和印度尼西亚的以狩猎采集为生的本地人，并扩大到最遥远的波利尼西亚诸岛，但未能在澳大利亚和新几内亚大部分地区殖民。对研究世界史的人来说，东亚和太平洋各民族之间发生的所有这些冲突具有双重的重要性：这些冲突形成了现代世界三分之一人口生存的国家，在这些国家中，经济权力正日益集中；这些冲突还为了解世界其他地方一些民族的历史提供了特别清晰的模式。 第十八章又回到第三章里提出的问题，即欧洲民族和美洲印第安人之间的冲突。总结一下新大陆和欧亚太陆西部地区过去13000年的历史，可以弄清楚欧洲对美洲的征服只不过是两条漫长的通常互不相干的历史轨迹的顶点。这两条轨迹的差异表现在这两个大陆在可驯化的动植物、病菌、定居年代、大陆轴线走向以及生态障碍方面的差异。 最后，非洲撒哈拉沙漠以南地区的历史（十九章）与新大陆的历史不但存在着悬殊的差异，而且也具有显著的相似之处。造成欧洲人与非洲人的冲突的那些因案，同样造成了欧洲人与印第安人的冲突。结果，欧洲人的征服并没有在非洲撒哈拉沙漠以南地区建立大片的或长期的殖民地，只有非洲的南端是例外。具有更持久意义的是非洲内部大规模的人口转移，即班图人的扩张。这都是由许多同样的原因引发的，也就是在卡哈马卡、在东亚、在太平详诸岛以及在澳大利亚和新几内亚自始至终都在发生作用的那些原因。 我不抱任何幻想，以为本书己成功地说明了各大洲过去13000年的历史。显然，要想在一本书里做到这一点是不可能的，即使我们真正地了解所有这些答案，我们也不可能做到，何况我们并不了解呢。至多，本书确定了几组环境因案，我认为这些因案提供了对耶利的问题的大部分答案。承认这些因素也就是突出了原因不明的剩下来的几个问题，而了解这些问题则是将来要做的事。 后记题为《人类史作为一门科学的未来》，列出了剩下来的几个问题，包括欧亚大陆不同地区之间的差异问题，与环境无关的文化因素的作用，以及个人的作用。也许，这些未解决的问题中最大问题是确立人类史作为一门历史科学的地位，就像演化生物学、地质学和气候学这类已经得到承认的历史科学一样。对人类历史的研究的确会碰到一些真正的困难，但这些已经得到承认的历史科学也碰到一些同样的挑战。因此，在这些不同领域中发展起来的方法在人类史这个领域中也可能证明是有用的。 然而，我希望我已经使读者相信，历史并不“就是一个又一个讨厌的事实”，就像一个愤世嫉者说的那样。的确存在着适用于历史的广泛模式，而寻找对这些模式的解释不但令人陶醉，也是大有稗益的。

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Notes: