Why the West Rules--For Now (126 page)

Jared Diamond, Constantin Fasolt, Niall Ferguson, Jack Goldstone, John Haldon, Ian Hodder, Agnes Hsu, Mark Lewis, Barnaby Marsh, Neil Roberts, and Richard Saller all read parts of the book while I was writing it, and Eric Chinski, Daniel Crewe, Al Dien, Dora Dien, Martin Lewis, Adrienne Mayor, Josh Ober, Michael Puett, Jim Robinson, Kathy St. John, and Walter Scheidel read the entire manuscript. I am enormously grateful for their comments and advice, and apologetic for the places where I failed to understand it or was too stubborn to take it.

Bob Bellah, Francesca Bray, Mark Elvin, Ian Hodder, Richard Klein, Mark Lewis, Li Liu, Tom McClellan, Douglass North, Walter Scheidel, Nathan Sivin, Adam Smith, Richard Strassberg, Donald Wagner, Barry Weingast, and Zhang Xuelian allowed me to read unpublished or recently published writings, and, in addition to everyone I have already mentioned, conversations with Chip Blacker, David Christian, Paul David, Lance Davis, Paul Ehrlich, Peter Garnsey, David Graff, David Kennedy, Kristian Kristiansen, David Laitin, Geoffrey Lloyd, Steve Mithen, Colin Renfrew, Marshall Sahlins, Jim Sheehan, Steve Shennan, Peter Temin, Lothar von Falkenhausen, Chris Wickham, Bin Wong, Gavin Wright, Victor Xiong, Xiaoneng Yang, Dingxin Zhao, and Yiqun Zhou helped me think through various ideas in the book. Participants in the “Ancient Mediterranean and Chinese Empires” and “First Great Divergence” conferences at Stanford and at talks in Abu Dhabi, Anaheim, Athens (Greece), Austin, Big Sky (Montana), Cambridge (MA and UK), Los Angeles, Medford, Montreal, New Haven, Seattle, Stanford, and Victoria (British Columbia) also listened to parts of the argument and made very helpful suggestions.

Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences provided financial support that made it possible for me to see the book through. I would like to thank Michele Angel for drawing the final versions of the maps and graphs and Pat Powell for securing permissions to reproduce pictures and texts previously published elsewhere.

Last but certainly not least, the book would never have been written without the encouragement of Sandy Dijkstra and the team at the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency; my editors, Eric Chinski at Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Daniel Crewe at Profile Books; and Eugenie Cha at FSG.

Index

Abelard, Peter,
370
–71

Abraham,
351

Abu Hureyra (Syria),
90
–91,
94
,
97
,
104
,
122

Achaemenids,
249

Acheulean hand axes,
47
–50

Act of Union (Britain, 1707),
472
n

Adam, African,
71

Adams, Thomas,
618

Adrianople, battle of,
313

Aeneas,
241
,
244

Afghanistan,
249
,
271
,
604

Soviet invasion of,
548

African-Americans,
71

Agassiz, Louis,
91

agriculture,
see
farming

Ahhiyawa,
197
–98,
218

Ahuramazda,
249
,
269

Ai, Marquis,
233

AIDS,
536
,
603

‘Ain Ghazal (Jordan),
100
,
102
,
124

‘Ain Mallaha (Israel),
86
,
88
,
91
,
94
,
96
,
100

Ainu,
450

Akaiwasha people,
218

Akhenaten, Pharaoh,
261
–62

Akkadian Empire (Mesopotamia),
189
,
192
–94,
209

Albert, Prince,
6
,
9
–11,
14
,
18
,
19
,
32
,
36

Alberti, Leon Battista,
419
,
420
n

Aleutian Islands,
421

Alexander of Macedon (the Great),
186
–87,
268
–71,
275
,
292

Alexandria (Egypt),
352

Allen, Paul,
542

‘Ali,
357
,
358
,
361
,
444

al-Qaeda,
605

Altamira (Spain),
73
–75,
74
,
79
–80

Alvarez Cabral, Pedro,
430

Amarna (Egypt),
197
,
215

America,
160
,
428
,
482
,
486
,
519
–20,
564

diseases in,
295

European colonization of,
19
,
460
,
462
–67

farming in,
117
–18

Ice Age in,
64
,
65
,
68
,
75
,
81
,
91

native peoples of,
19
,
109
,
119
,
430
,
450
,
464
,
522

oil in,
511

prehistoric,
80
,
84
–85

Vikings in,
371
,
421
;
see also
United States

American Journal of Human Genetics
,
111

American Revolution,
260
,
488
,
490

Amorites,
191
,
192
,
194
,
209
,
353

Analects
(Confucius),
256

Anatolia,
197
,
199
,
200
,
225
,
233
n
,
250
,
311
,
352
,
366
,
372
,
401
,
444

Anban (China),
125
,
126

ancestor cults,
102
,
231

Andun, King,
273

Anglo-Saxons,
346

Angola,
535

An Lushan,
355
,
356
,
375
,
424

anti-Semitism,
514

Antonina,
345
,
346

Antony,
283
,
284

Anyang (China),
212
–15,
220
–22,
229

Apocalypse Now!
(film),
520
n

Apollo 11,
182

Apollo 11 Cave (Namibia),
77

Apple computers,
542

Aquinas, Thomas,
371

Arabia,
16
,
67
,
275
,
349

Arabs,
349
–52,
360
,
362
,
370
,
377
,
427
,
566

in China,
342
,
407
n
,
478

lands conquered by,
33
n
,
350
,
352
–54,
356
–57,
365
,
367
,
445
,
563
–64