Abstract
Jared Diamond begins Guns, Germs, and Steel, his popular work on the effects of environmental features on the history of different cultures' material success, by recounting a conversation with Yali, a young New Guinean. Aware of the material wealth of Diamond's society and the comparative material scarcity surrounding him in his own, Yali asked Diamond the singularly obvious and important question (which I paraphrase here) "Why is it that you have so much cargo, while we have so little cargo?" (Diamond 1999 , p. 14; see A, Note 1).

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