The lesson that Diamond is trying to teach us through the
example of the Polynesians is that the physical environment where a group of people
settles determines what sort of society they create. He uses the Polynesians to show
this because they were one ethnic group with one culture that spread to many different
islands with many different physical environments. After the Polynesians dispersed,
they developed many different kinds of cultures depending on the physical
characteristics of the places where they settled. These ranged from small bands of
hunter-gatherers to relatively large chiefdoms like Hawaii or
Tonga.
To Diamond, this is an important lesson. It shows
that societies develop and become more complex because of the physical environments they
inhabit, not because of anything that is inherent in the natures of the people
themselves.
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