While we are used to living in a society with the Internet, centralized government, and food grown by someone other than ourselves, these staples of industrial culture are recent evolutions. As Diamond explains. “the ancestors of all of us here were living under traditional, tribal, conditions until virtually yesterday measured against the time-scale of human evolution.” Although we have made many advances as a society, the fact that traditional societies have been living the same way for hundreds of years gives them experience that we don't yet have. They have learned certain strategies and ways of living that have stood the test of time—something that we can certainly learn from no matter how different these strategies may be from our own.
Diamond is currently a professor of geography at UCLA. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and his groundbreaking work answers some of today's most pressing questions about the nature of human development. His talks are eye opening and comprehensive. Diamond shows us a history of where we came from, how we can learn from our past, and what direction we will take as a species in the future.