The Southward Advance Of Native African Farmers

We Can't Manipulate Some Stars While Maintaining Other Stars As Controls; We Can't Start And Stop Ice Ages, And We Can't Experiment With Designing And Evolving Dinosaurs.

We Scientists Have Fantasies Of Being Uniquely Qualified To Make Great Discoveries. Alas, Reality Is Cruel: Most Of Us Are Replaceable. For The Vast Majority Of Scientific Contributions, If Scientist X Hadn't Achieved It That Year, Scientist Y Would Have Achieved The Same Result Or Something Very Similar Soon Thereafter.

For Anyone Inclined To Caricature Environmental History As 'environmental Determinism,' The Contrasting Histories Of The Dominican Republic And Haiti Provide A Useful Antidote. Yes, Environmental Problems Do Constrain Human Societies, But The Societies' Responses Also Make A Difference.

The Rate Of Human Invention Is Faster, And The Rate Of Cultural Loss Is Slower, In Areas Occupied By Many Competing Societies With Many Individuals And In Contact With Societies Elsewhere.

Lest Those Islands Still Seem To You Too Remote In Space And Time To Be Relevant To Our Modern Societies, Just Think About The Risks... Of Our Increasing Globalization And Increasing Worldwide Economic Interdependence.