“With the rise of chiefdoms around 7,500 years ago, people had to learn, for the first time in history, how to encounter strangers regularly without attempting to kill them.”

—  Jared Diamond, book Guns, Germs, and Steel

Source: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "With the rise of chiefdoms around 7,500 years ago, people had to learn, for the first time in history, how to encounter…" by Jared Diamond?
Jared Diamond photo
Jared Diamond33
American scientist and author 1937

Related quotes

Lenny Bruce photo

“If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.”

Lenny Bruce (1925–1966) comedian and social critic

“My grandfather said people who can learn, learn morality the way they learn everything else, by building on history. He also said that some people cannot learn from history, so they cannot change. For them, there’s only one book or tradition or whatever it’s called in their religion, and in that book God is eternal and whatever the book says God commanded two or three or four thousand years ago, God still commands today. That may be kill homosexuals or kill nonbelievers. It may say enslave your enemies. It may say mutilate or sequester women, or sell your ten-year-old daughter for somebody’s third wife.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: The Fresco (2000), Chapter 49, p. 391

“A hundred years ago—or even a couple of generations ago—you do not encounter the sort of waving of the bloody shirt of prejudice that greets you on all sides now. Men did not profess such indignation that other men had differing convictions and viewpoints. They rather expected to encounter these, and to argue with them as best they could.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“Life without prejudice,” p. 1.
Life Without Prejudice (1965)

Yolanda King photo

“You learn in retrospect and appreciate as you move on. I was indeed shaped by my experience at Smith—it was the first time I had to struggle. It was the very first time I learned how to determine and focus very specifically on the things that I felt were important, to strategize and to learn how to go about getting them and making them happen.”

Yolanda King (1955–2007) American actress

1980s, A Dream Deferred (1989)
Context: It is a real thrill to be back home. When I was here I was not as endeared to this institution as I am now. You learn in retrospect and appreciate as you move on. I was indeed shaped by my experience at Smith—it was the first time I had to struggle. It was the very first time I learned how to determine and focus very specifically on the things that I felt were important, to strategize and to learn how to go about getting them and making them happen. While it was painful then, I am truly thankful for that experience now.

Muhammad al-Taqi photo

“Knowledgeable persons are strangers because of the many ignorant people around them.”

Muhammad al-Taqi (811–835) ninth of the Twelve Imams of Twelver Shi'ism

[Baqir Sharīf al-Qurashi, The life of Imam Muhammad al-Jawad, Wonderful Maxims and Arts, 2005]

Adrienne von Speyr photo

“The first step in learning to love others is the attempt to understand them.”

Adrienne von Speyr (1902–1967) Swiss doctor and mystic

Source: Lumina and New Lumina (1969), p. 16

Hannes Alfvén photo

“There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago.”

Hannes Alfvén (1908–1995) Swedish electrical engineer and plasma physicist

Source: Dean of the Plasma Dissidents (1988), p. 196.

Benoît Mandelbrot photo

“The extraordinary surprise that my first pictures provoked is unlikely to be continued. Many people saw them fifteen years ago, ten years ago. Now children see it on their computers when the computers do nothing else. The surprise is not there.”

Benoît Mandelbrot (1924–2010) Polish-born, French and American mathematician

Segment 144
Peoples Archive interview
Context: The extraordinary surprise that my first pictures provoked is unlikely to be continued. Many people saw them fifteen years ago, ten years ago. Now children see it on their computers when the computers do nothing else. The surprise is not there. The shock of novelty is not there. Therefore the unity that the shock of novelty, surprise, provided to all these activities will not continue. People will know about fractals earlier and earlier, more and more progressively. I think that the best future to expect and perhaps also the best future to hope for, is that fractal ideas will remain either as a peripheral or as a central tool in very many fields.

“A long time ago I learned not to explain things to people. It misleads them into thinking they're entitled to know everything I do.”

Lisa Kleypas book Dreaming of You

Source: Dreaming of You

Related topics