Bestselling author of Collapse and Guns Germs and Steel
The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013
UCSD Price Center Ballroom
In his new book The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies?, Pulitzer Prize-winner Jared Diamond provides an epic journey into our rapidly receding past, revealing how tribal societies offer an extraordinary window into how our ancestors lived for millions of years â€“ until virtually yesterday, in evolutionary terms - and how they can provide unique, often overlooked insights into human nature.
Drawing on his own fieldwork spanning nearly five decades of working and living in New Guinea as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people and other cultures, Diamond explores how tribal peoples approach essential human problems, from childrearing to old age to conflict resolution to health, and discovers that we have much to learn from these traditional ways of life.
As he reminds us, the West achieved global dominance due to specific environmental and technological advantages, but Westerners do not necessarily have superior ideas on how to raise children, care for the elderly, or simply live well. Join us as Dr. Diamond provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past that also suggests profound lessons for how we can live today.
Jared Diamond is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the seminal Guns, Germs, and Steel, voted one of TIME magazine's top 100 nonfiction books of all time, and Collapse, a number one international bestseller. A professor of geography at UCLA and a noted polymath, Diamondâ€™s work has been influential in the fields of anthropology, biology, ornithology, ecology and history, among others.