The World Until Yesterday

Jared Diamond’s The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies? is a 2012 nonfiction popular science book that explores the cultural practices of tribal societies and the lessons Western civilization might learn from their way of life. Diamond is a writer and academic most famous for his Pulitzer Prize-winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel, a look into why Eurasian and North African societies have historically triumphed over others.

Diamond admits that although most “traditional” societies have been influenced by contact with the outside world, there are nonetheless lessons to be learned from them about the way humankind lived before the emergence of nations and states. He sees the tribal societies that remain as a window to our past and a mirror to our lives, arguing that they offer different (though not necessarily better) ways of solving universal human problems and conflicts than Western society.

The book delves into a discussion of the basic components of tribal society. A stark difference lies in the definitions of terms like “friend” and “enemy.” In a tribal society, a “friend” means a member of your own tribe or of a peaceful neighboring village, someone with whom your people as a whole are on good terms. “Enemies” are also not individual; they refer to members of warring or hostile villages or tribes.



In the next section of the book, Diamond looks at times of peace and of war between tribes. As an illustration of tribal justice, he uses an anecdote about a young boy in New Guinea who was hit by a car and killed. The boy is deemed responsible for the accident, but the company the driver works for pays compensation to the boy’s family. Diamond explains that the money is not about paying for damages or medical bills incurred, as it might be in Western society, but as compensation for the boy’s life. Though his life is greater than any monetary value, it’s still worth something. According to Diamond, it’s important to pay compensation in this way because in tribal societies, everyone knows each other and must continue to live together and work together.

When tribal systems fail to reason their way out of conflict, war begins. While wars between tribes are fought on a smaller scale, they also go on for much longer than typical wars between nations. Diamond writes that non-state wars are typically fought over a scarcity of available land and resources when one tribe becomes too big to sustain itself. Without central governments, however, these small wars are difficult to end. Members of these tribes live in danger. Constant war is one reason that nation-states form: the government can offer protection to everyday citizens.

The next section of the book discusses tribal methods of raising children and how they compare to Western society. Practices vary wildly across tribes and parts of the world. Among the Piraha of Brazil, childbirth is an event that occurs in the wilderness and alone. Among the Agta in the Philippines, childbirth is a community event with the whole tribe offering assistance to the mother. Other tribes, like the !Kung in Africa, practice infanticide. While killing newborn infants is unthinkable in Western society, among the !Kung it might be a necessity for survival of other children in the family or in the tribe as a whole, if food and resources are scarce.



Traditional societies tend to practice child-rearing differently from Westerners. Infants experience constant skin-to-skin contact with their mothers, who tend to carry them in slings as they go about their daily tasks. Fathers play less of a role in child-rearing; they are often away hunting for food. Once young boys come of age, they leave their mothers and younger siblings behind to join the men in hunting and providing for the rest of the tribe.

Some tribes offer children more freedom to explore their environments, doing little to hinder them or warn them of danger and letting them learn from their mistakes. Other tribes are overprotective of their young ones, rigidly separating them by age and raising them with a strong sense of guilt and obligation. Both extremes might sound foreign to Western ears, but there are lessons to be learned from both.

Tribal societies also differ in their treatment of the elderly. The three options Diamond lays out are “cherish, abandon, or kill.” Some traditional societies value their elders as a source of wisdom. However, as these elders become infirm they can also become a liability and a drain on resources. The Saami people of Scandinavia intentionally abandon the elderly; some tribes in South America allow their senior members to wander away from the group, never to come back.



Diamond contrasts this with Western society, which also offers strikingly different options for its elderly. Some children become caretakers for their aging parents; others put them into a nursing home and visit rarely. Old people in our society tend to enjoy longer lives, better health, and a wider variety of opportunities. At the same time, dropping birth rates mean that there are now many more old people than young, leaving Western society with a much greater obligation in supporting them.

Part Four explains a concept Diamond calls “constructive paranoia.” This is a way for tribal people to cope with constant danger. For example, he observes seemingly illogical fears from New Guineans that a tree will fall on them in their sleep. While a tree falling on a person is a rare event, Diamond realizes that they sleep under trees often enough that this fear is not unfounded: their risk of being crushed is higher because sleeping under trees is so common. While their constructive paranoia is not always justified, it is a reasonable response to the level of danger they live with, lives in which they might easily be mauled by a lion, ravaged by disease, or face starvation.

In the book’s final section, Diamond observes both religion and health in traditional societies. First, he notes that religion seems to fill a universal human need, and theorizes that it is because of our need to understand why things happen. Tribal societies tend to see inanimate objects as having a will of their own, and a power of their own. Religion can be a way of explaining why the sun comes up or why earthquakes happen.



Finally, Diamond discusses the common diseases that plague Western society and have begun to infiltrate traditional societies, such as diabetes. Strangely, Pima Indians and Nauru Islanders are particularly prone to diabetes due to Western dietary influences, though they lived relatively healthy lives for thousands of years before that. This suggests that there is an environmental role in the development of diabetes.

Diamond acknowledges the many benefits of Western society, such as advanced medicine and technologies that increase comfort and decrease labor, but looks to the customs of traditional societies to see where we might do better or realize the aspects of modern living that are nonsensical.

The World Until Yesterday received mixed reviews, with the New York Times observing that while the subject is fascinating, Diamond’s writing style is “curiously impersonal.” Diamond later turned the book into the subject of a 2013 TED talk.