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Jared Diamond Anthropology

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When one looks through history, it is easy to rely on explanations that are deceptively simple, but this is the true trap. History is no easy beast to tame, and one shouldn’t expect an explanation to come easily. To Jared Diamond, there is a combined ecological and political explanation for what caused the collapse of The Southwest civilizations such as the Anasazi. The Anasazi saw a rapid increase in population in the late 1300s, and when the weather continued to provide positive weather conditions for growth, their empire expanded into lands that were not as fertile to provide food and resources for their growing population. When the weather ceased to grant the Anasazi people quite as much potency, a drought occurred and famine thereafter. The only way to produce food was to use the fertile lands left in the middle of the empire, but this wasn’t nearly enough to feed the entire empire. Thus, the empire collapsed due to overzealously …show more content…
Wilcox disagrees with many of the assumptions that Jared Diamond makes. Wilcox believes that while Diamond is an excellent author and certainly has excellent rhetoric, his overall message is misleading. The tree cores and soil samples provide Diamond with “unbiased” sources of history, however just like any form of record, they can be misinterpreted and are missing the context. Wilcox focuses that in many times in our nation’s history since the 1600s, it has been Native Americans relations with colonists that have caused massive disruptions and deaths among the local population. But the records Diamond uses wouldn’t show of institutionalized racism to the native populations or of resources being diverted to the white farmers who had “more of a right to it” than the native populations. In the end, while there seems to be a fascination with fables of how the Native peoples brought down their own downfalls, it is misguided to assume that mismanagement of resources by the Natives is what brought

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