Interview with a writer: Jared Diamond

In his latest book The World Until Yesterday, Jared Diamond analyses the behavioral differences between human beings in tribal stateless-societies and those living in bureaucratic nation states. Diamond says that if states only came into existence 5,400 years ago, and agriculture in the last 11,000, human beings have been wandering nomads for most of history. Therefore, if modern nations are relatively new concepts, we have much to learn from traditional cultures.

Drawing on his experience of 50 years of field research in New Guinea, Diamond attempts to prove his thesis with a mixture of personal anecdotes and academic research. He claims the way people in traditional societies raise their children, spend their leisure time, and communicate, are often superior to normal practices in the West. But because traditional societies lack the vast bureaucratic apparatus of the state, its people are in a chronic cycle of war.

The 75-year-old polymath and popular science writer spoke to me about practices in traditional societies that may seem shocking to some Westerners.