Did History Repeat Itself

1
Did History Repeat Itself?

• By Michael Joslin

2
Did History Repeat

• From around 3,500 to 300 B.C., Organized states
  began to develop around the world.

3
Did History Repeat

• Did they develop independently or were the result
  of contacts with other nations?

4
Did History Repeat

• Many believe that social inventions such as plant
  and animal domestication came from a single
  source.
• This is known as the theory of diffusionism.

5
Did History Repeat

• Harris believes that people are capable of
  creating new innovations independently.
• He convincingly show several problems to exist
  with the theory of diffusionism.

6
Did History Repeat

• The first problem he has is with the implication
  that the world only contained a small group of
  geniuses while the rest were all complete morons.

7
Did History Repeat

• Another problem is with the contradicting dates
  of plant domestication in different parts of the
  globe.

8
Did History Repeat

• If diffusionism was true, then why did wheat, a
  very ideal plant for domestication, take around
  6,000 years to travel from the Middle East to
  China?
• But yet millet, a less ideal plant, took only a
  couple thousand years to reach China.

9
Did History Repeat

• Recent dating shows that plant and animal
  domestication occurred at roughly the same time
  period in China and the Fertile Crescent.

10
Did History Repeat

• Harris instead takes the position that
  agricultural and social techniques did develop
  independently in different parts of the world.
• To understand this better, we must look at his
  definition of the superstructure.
• These are universal, symbolic processes that all
  humanity has access to.

11
Did History Repeat

• History has shown that different ideas and
  innovations can appear separate from each other.
• An example could be the building of pyramids in
  both South America and Egypt.

12
Did History Repeat

• Harris does a convincing job of showing that
  cultures can develop different innovations around
  the world.
• What is most interesting of his analysis is that
  humans will react along similar lines in a given
  circumstance.