Cover Stories
Yesterday’s wisdomJared Diamond examines what traditional societies can teach the Western world in “The World Until Yesterday” When Jared Diamond first began doing field work in the highlands of New Guinea in the 1960s, tribal warfare was a recent memory and writing was still new to many of the tribes, including the Fore, the first tribe that Diamond worked with. Diamond returned to New Guinea many times in the intervening years, and each time, the changes in the people were remarkable. In 1998, he came back to the island to work on an environmental survey and was struck by how different New Guinean society had become in a few short years. “In the next room, there was a New Guinean using a computer. He was doing engineering diagrams; he was Fore, and his father had been the first person in the southern Fore area who learned how to write,” Diamond says. |
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