READING GROUP GUIDE
阅读小组指南
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
讨论问题
1. What are the other commonly espoused answers to “Yali's question,” and how does Jared Diamond address and refute each of them?
1.对“亚利问题”的其他普遍支持的答案是什么？贾里德·戴蒙德如何回答和反驳这些答案？
2. Why does Diamond hypothesize that New Guineans might be, on the average, “smarter” than Westerners?
2.为什么戴蒙德假设新几内亚人平均来说可能比西方人“更聪明”？
3. Why is it important to differentiate between proximate and ultimate causes?
3.为什么区分近因和最终原因很重要？
4. Do you find some of Diamond's methodologies more compelling than others? Which, and why?
4.您是否发现Diamond的某些方法比其他方法更有说服力？这是什么，为什么？
5. What is the importance of the order of the chapters? Why, for example, is “Collision at Cajamarca”—which describes events that occur thousands of years after those described in the subsequent chapters—placed where it is?
5.章节顺序的重要性是什么？例如，为什么“卡哈马卡碰撞”-描述发生在随后章节中描述的事件数千年后的事件-会被放置在何处？
6. How are Polynesian Islands “an experiment of history”? What conclusions does Diamond draw from their history?
6.波利尼西亚群岛如何成为“历史实验”？钻石从他们的历史中得出了什么结论？
7. How does Diamond challenge our assumptions about the transition from hunter-gathering to farming?
7.Diamond如何挑战我们关于从狩猎采集过渡到农业的假设？
8. How is farming an “auto-catalytic” process? How does this account for the great disparities in societies, as well as for the possibilities of parallel evolution?
8.农业是如何“自动催化”的过程？这如何解释社会中的巨大差异以及平行进化的可能性？
9. Why did almonds prove domesticable while acorns were not? What significance does this have?
9.为什么杏仁被证明是家常食品，而橡子则不是？这有什么意义？
10. How does Diamond explain the fact that domesticable American apples and grapes were not domesticated until the arrival of Europeans?
10.戴蒙德如何解释美国本土苹果和葡萄直到欧洲人到来才被驯化的事实？
11. What were the advantages enjoyed by the Fertile Crescent that allowed it to be the earliest site of development for most of the building blocks of civilization? How does Diamond explain the fact that it was nevertheless Europe and not Southwest Asia that ended up spreading its culture to the rest of the world?
11.肥沃的新月有哪些优势，使其成为大多数文明基石的最早开发地点？戴蒙德如何解释这一事实，即最终将其文化传播到世界其他地区的是欧洲而不是西南亚？
12. How does Diamond refute the argument that the failure to domesticate certain animals arose from cultural differences? What does the modern failure to domesticate, for example, the eland suggest about the reasons why some peoples independently developed domestic animals and others did not?
12.戴蒙德如何驳斥某些动物未能驯化是由于文化差异的论点？例如，现代人未能驯化大羚羊，这说明了为什么有些人独立发展家畜，而另一些人却没有？
13. What is the importance of the “Anna Karenina principle”?
13.“安娜·卡列尼娜原则”的重要性是什么？
14. How does comparing mutations help one trace the spread of agriculture?
14.比较突变如何帮助追踪农业的传播？
15. How does civilization lead to epidemics?
15.文明如何导致流行病？
16. How does Diamond's theory that invention is, in fact, the mother of necessity bear upon the traditional “heroic” model of invention?
16.戴蒙德关于发明实际上是必然之母的理论如何影响传统的“英雄”发明模式？
17. According to Diamond, how does religion evolve along with increasingly complex societies?
17.根据戴蒙德的说法，宗教如何随着日益复杂的社会而演变？
18. How is linguistic evidence used to draw conclusions about the spread of peoples in China, Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and Africa?
18.如何利用语言证据得出关于中国、东南亚、太平洋和非洲民族传播的结论？
19. What is the significance of the differing outcomes of Austronesian expansion in Indonesia and New Guinea?
19.印度尼西亚和新几内亚南岛扩张的不同结果有什么意义？
20. How does Diamond explain China's striking unity and Europe's persistent disunity? What consequences do these conditions have for world history?
20.戴蒙德如何解释中国惊人的统一和欧洲持续的不统一？这些条件对世界历史有什么影响？
21. How does Diamond refute the charge that Australia is proof that differences in the fates of human societies are a matter of people and not environment? In what other areas of the world could Diamond's argument be used?
21.戴蒙德如何驳斥关于澳大利亚证明人类社会命运差异是人的问题而不是环境问题的指控？戴蒙德的论点还可以用于世界其他哪些领域？
22. What aspects of Diamond's evidence do lay readers have to take on faith? Which aspects are explained?
22.非专业读者对戴蒙德证据的哪些方面有信心？解释了哪些方面？
23. Diamond offers two tribes, the Chimbu and the Daribi, as examples of differing receptivities to innovation. Do you think he would accept larger, continent-wide differences in receptivity? Why or why not? How problematic might cultural factors prove for Diamond's arguments?
23.Diamond提供了两个部落，Chimbu部落和Daribi部落，作为创新接受度不同的例子。你认为他会接受整个欧洲大陆在接受能力上的更大差异吗？为什么？为什么不？文化因素对戴蒙德的观点有多大的影响？
24. How, throughout the book, does Diamond address the issues he discusses in the last few pages of his final chapter, when he proposes a science of human history?
24.在整本书中，当戴蒙德提出人类历史科学时，他是如何解决他在最后一章最后几页中讨论的问题的？