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Guns, Germs, and Steel

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (subtitled A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years in Britain) is a 1997 transdisciplinary non-fiction book by the American author Jared Diamond. The book attempts to explain why Eurasian and North African civilizations have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate primarily in environmental differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops. When cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians (for example, written language or the development among Eurasians of resistance to endemic diseases), he asserts that these advantages occurred because of the influence of geography on societies and cultures (for example, by facilitating commerce and trade between different cultures) and were not inherent in the Eurasian genomes.

In 1998, it won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the Aventis Prize for Best Science Book. A documentary based on the book, and produced by the National Geographic Society, was broadcast on PBS in July 2005.

Synopsis
The prologue opens with an account of Diamond's conversation with Yali, a Papua New Guinean politician. The conversation turned to the differences in power and technology between Papua New Guineans and the Europeans who dominated the region for two centuries, differences that neither of them considered due to European genetic superiority. Yali asked, using the local term cargo for inventions and manufactured goods, "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?"

Diamond realized the same question seemed to apply elsewhere: "People of Eurasian origin... dominate... the world in wealth and power." Other peoples, after having thrown off colonial domination, still lag in wealth and power. Still others, he says, "have been decimated, subjugated, and in some cases even exterminated by European colonialists."

The peoples of other continents (sub-Saharan Africans, Indigenous people of the Americas, Aboriginal Australians, New Guineans, and the original inhabitants of tropical Southeast Asia) have been largely conquered, displaced and in some extreme cases – referring to Native Americans, Aboriginal Australians, and South Africa's indigenous Khoisan peoples – largely exterminated by farm-based societies such as Eurasians and Bantu. He believes this is due to these societies' technological and immunological advantages, stemming from the early rise of agriculture after the last ice age.

Title
The book's title is a reference to the means by which farm-based societies conquered populations and maintained dominance though sometimes being vastly outnumbered, so that imperialism was enabled by guns, germs, and steel.

Diamond argues geographic, climatic and environmental characteristics which favored early development of stable agricultural societies ultimately led to immunity to diseases endemic in agricultural animals and the development of powerful, organized states capable of dominating others.

Summary
Diamond argues that Eurasian civilization is not so much a product of ingenuity, but of opportunity and necessity. That is, civilization is not created out of superior intelligence, but is the result of a chain of developments, each made possible by certain preconditions.

The first step towards civilization is the move from nomadic hunter-gatherer to rooted agrarian society. Several conditions are necessary for this transition to occur: access to high-carbohydrate vegetation that endures storage; a climate dry enough to allow storage; and access to animals docile enough for domestication and versatile enough to survive captivity. Control of crops and livestock leads to food surpluses. Surpluses free people to specialize in activities other than sustenance and support population growth. The combination of specialization and population growth leads to the accumulation of social and technological innovations which build on each other. Large societies develop ruling classes and supporting bureaucracies, which in turn lead to the organization of nation-states and empires.

Although agriculture arose in several parts of the world, Eurasia gained an early advantage due to the greater availability of suitable plant and animal species for domestication. In particular, Eurasia has barley, two varieties of wheat, and three protein-rich pulses for food; flax for textiles; and goats, sheep, and cattle. Eurasian grains were richer in protein, easier to sow, and easier to store than American maize or tropical bananas.

As early Western Asian civilizations developed trading relationships, they found additional useful animals in adjacent territories, such as horses and donkeys for use in transport. Diamond identifies 13 species of large animals over 100 lb domesticated in Eurasia, compared with just one in South America (counting the llama and alpaca as breeds within the same species) and none at all in the rest of the world. Australia and North America suffered from a lack of useful animals due to extinction, probably by human hunting, shortly after the end of the Pleistocene, and the only domesticated animals in New Guinea came from the East Asian mainland during the Austronesian settlement around 4,000–5,000 years ago. Biological relatives of the horse, including zebras and onagers, proved untameable; and although African elephants can be tamed, it is very difficult to breed them in captivity. Diamond describes the small number of domesticated species (14 out of 148 "candidates") as an instance of the Anna Karenina principle: many promising species have just one of several significant difficulties that prevent domestication. He argues that all large mammals that could be domesticated, have been.

Eurasians domesticated goats and sheep for hides, clothing, and cheese; cows for milk; bullocks for tillage of fields and transport; and benign animals such as pigs and chickens. Large domestic animals such as horses and camels offered the considerable military and economic advantages of mobile transport.

Eurasia's large landmass and long east–west distance increased these advantages. Its large area provided more plant and animal species suitable for domestication. Equally important, its east–west orientation has allowed groups of people to wander and empires to conquer from one end of the continent to the other while staying at the same latitude. This was important because similar climate and cycle of seasons let them keep the same "food production system" – they could keep growing the same crops and raising the same animals all the way from Scotland to Siberia. Doing this throughout history, they spread innovations, languages and diseases everywhere.

By contrast, the north–south orientation of the Americas and Africa created countless difficulties adapting crops domesticated at one latitude for use at other latitudes (and, in North America, adapting crops from one side of the Rocky Mountains to the other). Similarly, Africa was fragmented by its extreme variations in climate from north to south: crops and animals that flourished in one area never reached other areas where they could have flourished, because they could not survive the intervening environment. Europe was the ultimate beneficiary of Eurasia's east–west orientation: in the first millennium BCE, the Mediterranean areas of Europe adopted Southwestern Asia's animals, plants, and agricultural techniques; in the first millennium CE, the rest of Europe followed suit.

The plentiful supply of food and the dense populations that it supported made division of labor possible. The rise of non-farming specialists such as craftsmen and scribes accelerated economic growth and technological progress. These economic and technological advantages eventually enabled Europeans to conquer the peoples of the other continents in recent centuries by using guns and steel, particularly after the devastation of native populations by the epidemic diseases from germs.

Eurasia's dense populations, high levels of trade, and living in close proximity to livestock resulted in widespread transmission of diseases, including from animals to humans. Smallpox, measles, and influenza were the result of close proximity between dense populations of animals and humans. Natural selection endowed most Eurasians with genetic variations making them less susceptible to some diseases, and constant circulation of diseases meant adult individuals had developed immunity to a wide range of pathogens. When Europeans made contact with the Americas, European diseases (to which Americans had no immunity) ravaged the indigenous American population, rather than the other way around. The "trade" in diseases was a little more balanced in Africa and southern Asia, where endemic malaria and yellow fever made these regions notorious as the "white man's grave". Some researchers say syphilis may have originated in the Americas, some say it was known to Hippocrates, and others think it was brought from the Americas by Columbus and his successors. The European diseases from germs obliterated indigenous populations so that relatively small numbers of Europeans could maintain dominance.

Diamond proposes geographical explanations for why western European societies, rather than other Eurasian powers such as China, have been the dominant colonizers. He said Europe's geography favored balkanization into smaller, closer nation-states, bordered by natural barriers of mountains, rivers, and coastline. Advanced civilization developed first in areas whose geography lacked these barriers, such as China, India and Mesopotamia. There, the ease of conquest meant they were dominated by large empires in which manufacturing, trade and knowledge flourished for millennia, while balkanized Europe remained more primitive.

However, at a later stage of development, western Europe's fragmented governmental structure actually became an advantage. Monolithic, isolated empires without serious competition could continue mistaken policies – such as China squandering its naval mastery by banning the building of ocean-going ships – for long periods without immediate consequences. In Western Europe, by contrast, competition from immediate neighbors meant that governments could not afford to suppress economic and technological progress for long; if they did not correct their mistakes, they were out-competed and/or conquered relatively quickly. While the leading powers alternated, a constant was rapid development of knowledge which could not be suppressed. For instance, the Chinese Emperor could ban shipbuilding and be obeyed, ending China's Age of Discovery, but the Pope could not keep Galileo's Dialogue from being republished in Protestant countries, or Kepler and Newton from continuing his progress; this ultimately enabled European merchant ships and navies to navigate around the globe. Western Europe also benefited from a more temperate climate than Southwestern Asia where intense agriculture ultimately damaged the environment, encouraged desertification, and hurt soil fertility.

Agriculture
Guns, Germs, and Steel argues that cities require an ample supply of food, and thus are dependent on agriculture. As farmers do the work of providing food, division of labor allows others freedom to pursue other functions, such as mining and literacy.

The crucial trap for the development of agriculture is the availability of wild edible plant species suitable for domestication. Farming arose early in the Fertile Crescent since the area had an abundance of wild wheat and pulse species that were nutritious and easy to domesticate. In contrast, American farmers had to struggle to develop corn as a useful food from its probable wild ancestor, teosinte.

Also important to the transition from hunter-gatherer to city-dwelling agrarian societies was the presence of "large" domesticable animals, raised for meat, work, and long-distance communication. Diamond identifies a mere 14 domesticated large mammal species worldwide. The five most useful (cow, horse, sheep, goat, and pig) are all descendants of species endemic to Eurasia. Of the remaining nine, only two (the llama and alpaca both of South America) are indigenous to a land outside the temperate region of Eurasia.

Due to the Anna Karenina principle, surprisingly few animals are suitable for domestication. Diamond identifies six criteria including the animal being sufficiently docile, gregarious, willing to breed in captivity and having a social dominance hierarchy. Therefore, none of the many African mammals such as the zebra, antelope, cape buffalo, and African elephant were ever domesticated (although some can be tamed, they are not easily bred in captivity). The Holocene extinction event eliminated many of the megafauna that, had they survived, might have become candidate species, and Diamond argues that the pattern of extinction is more severe on continents where animals that had no prior experience of humans were exposed to humans who already possessed advanced hunting techniques (such as the Americas and Australia).

Smaller domesticable animals such as dogs, cats, chickens, and guinea pigs may be valuable in various ways to an agricultural society, but will not be adequate in themselves to sustain a large-scale agrarian society. An important example is the use of larger animals such as cattle and horses in plowing land, allowing for much greater crop productivity and the ability to farm a much wider variety of land and soil types than would be possible solely by human muscle power. Large domestic animals also have an important role in the transportation of goods and people over long distances, giving the societies that possess them considerable military and economic advantages.

Geography
Diamond argues that geography shaped human migration, not simply by making travel difficult (particularly by latitude), but by how climates affect where domesticable animals can easily travel and where crops can ideally grow easily due to the sun. The dominant Out of Africa theory holds that modern humans developed east of the Great Rift Valley of the African continent at one time or another. The Sahara kept people from migrating north to the Fertile Crescent, until later when the Nile River valley became accommodating. Diamond continues to describe the story of human development up to the modern era, through the rapid development of technology, and its dire consequences on hunter-gathering cultures around the world.

Diamond touches on why the dominant powers of the last 500 years have been West European rather than East Asian, especially Chinese. The Asian areas in which big civilizations arose had geographical features conducive to the formation of large, stable, isolated empires which faced no external pressure to change which led to stagnation. Europe's many natural barriers allowed the development of competing nation states. Such competition forced the European nations to encourage innovation and avoid technological stagnation.

Germs
In the later context of the European colonization of the Americas, 95% of the indigenous populations are believed to have been killed off by diseases brought by the Europeans. Many were killed by infectious diseases such as smallpox and measles. Similar circumstances were observed in Australia and South Africa. Aboriginal Australians and the Khoikhoi population were devastated by smallpox, measles, influenza, and other diseases.

Diamond questions how diseases native to the American continents did not kill off Europeans, and posits that most of these diseases were developed and sustained only in large dense populations in villages and cities. He also states most epidemic diseases evolve from similar diseases of domestic animals. The combined effect of the increased population densities supported by agriculture, and of close human proximity to domesticated animals leading to animal diseases infecting humans, resulted in European societies acquiring a much richer collection of dangerous pathogens to which European people had acquired immunity through natural selection (such as the Black Death and other epidemics) during a longer time than was the case for Native American hunter-gatherers and farmers.

He mentions the tropical diseases (mainly malaria) that limited European penetration into Africa as an exception. Endemic infectious diseases were also barriers to European colonisation of Southeast Asia and New Guinea.

Success and failure
Guns, Germs, and Steel focuses on why some populations succeeded. Diamond's later book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, focuses on environmental and other factors that have caused some populations to fail.

Intellectual background
In the 1930s, the Annales School in France undertook the study of long-term historical structures by using a synthesis of geography, history, and sociology. Scholars examined the impact of geography, climate, and land use. Although geography had been nearly eliminated as an academic discipline in the United States after the 1960s, several geography-based historical theories were published in the 1990s.

In 1991, Jared Diamond already considered the question of "why is it that the Eurasians came to dominate other cultures?" in The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (part four).

Praise
Many noted that the large scope of the work makes some oversimplification inevitable while still praising the book as a very erudite and generally effective synthesis of multiple different subjects. Paul R. Ehrlich and E. O. Wilson both praised the book.

Northwestern University economic historian Joel Mokyr interpreted Diamond as a geographical determinist but added that the thinker could never be described as "crude" like many determinists. For Mokyr, Diamond's view that Eurasia succeeded largely because of a uniquely large stock of domesticable plants is flawed because of the possibility of crop manipulation and selection in the plants of other regions: the drawbacks of an indigenous North American plant such as sumpweed could have been bred out, Mokyr wrote, since "all domesticated plants had originally undesirable characteristics" eliminated via "deliberate and lucky selection mechanisms". Mokyr dismissed as unpersuasive Diamond's theory that breeding specimens failing to fix characteristics controlled by multiple genes "lay at the heart of the geographically challenged societies". Mokyr also states that in seeing economic history as centered on successful manipulation of environments, Diamond downplays the role of "the option to move to a more generous and flexible area", and speculated that non-generous environments were the source of much human ingenuity and technology. However, Mokyr still argued that Guns, Germs, and Steel is "one of the more important contributions to long-term economic history and is simply mandatory to anyone who purports to engage Big Questions in the area of long-term global history". He lauded the book as full of "clever arguments about writing, language, path dependence and so on. It is brimming with wisdom and knowledge, and it is the kind of knowledge economic historians have always loved and admired."

Berkeley economic historian Brad DeLong described the book as a "work of complete and total genius". Harvard International Relations (IR) scholar Stephen Walt in a Foreign Policy article called the book "an exhilarating read" and put it on a list of the ten books every IR student should read. Tufts University IR scholar Daniel W. Drezner listed the book on his top ten list of must-read books about international economic history.

International Relations scholars Iver B. Neumann (of the London School of Economics and Political Science) and Einar Wigen (of University of Oslo) use Guns, Germs, and Steel as a foil for their own inter-disciplinary work. They write that "while empirical details should, of course, be correct, the primary yardstick for this kind of work cannot be attention to detail." According to the two writers, "Diamond stated clearly that any problematique of this magnitude had to be radically multi-causal and then set to work on one complex of factors, namely ecological ones", and note that Diamond "immediately came in for heavy criticism from specialists working in the disparate fields on which he drew". But Neumann and Wigen also stated, "Until somebody can come up with a better way of interpreting and adding to Diamond’s material with a view to understanding the same overarching problematique, his is the best treatment available of the ecological preconditions for why one part of the world, and not another, came to dominate." Historian Tonio Andrade writes that Diamond's book "may not satisfy professional historians on all counts" but that it "does make a bold and compelling case for the different developments that occurred in the Old World versus the New (he is less convincing in his attempts to separate Africa from Eurasia)."

Historian Tom Tomlinson wrote that the magnitude of the task makes it inevitable that Professor Diamond would "[use] very broad brush-strokes to fill in his argument", but ultimately commended the book. Taking the account of prehistory "on trust" because it was not his area of expertise, Tomlinson stated that the existence of stronger weapons, diseases, and means of transport is convincing as an "immediate cause" of Old World societies and technologies being dominant, but questioned Diamond's view that the way this has transpired has been through certain environments causing greater inventiveness which then caused more sophisticated technology. Tomlinson noted that technology spreads and allows for military conquests and the spread of economic changes, but that in Diamond's book this aspect of human history "is dismissed as largely a question of historical accident". Writing that Diamond gives meager coverage to the history of political thought, the historian suggested that capitalism (which Diamond classes as one of 10 plausible but incomplete explanations) has perhaps played a bigger role in prosperity than Diamond argues.

Tomlinson speculated that Diamond underemphasizes cultural idiosyncrasies as an explanation, and argues (with regards to the "germs" part of Diamond's triad of reasons) that the Black Death of the 14th century, as well as smallpox and cholera in 19th century Africa, rival the Eurasian devastation of indigenous populations as overall "events of human diffusion and coalescence". Tomlinson also found contentious Diamond's view that humanity's future can one day be foreseen with scientific rigor since this would involve a search for general laws that new theoretical approaches deny the possibility of establishing: "The history of humans cannot properly be equated with the history of dinosaurs, glaciers or nebulas, because these natural phenomena do not consciously create the evidence on which we try to understand them". Tomlinson still described these flaws as "minor", however, and wrote that Guns, Germs, and Steel "remains a very impressive achievement of imagination and exposition".

Another historian, professor J. R. McNeill, complimented the book for "its improbable success in making students of international relations believe that prehistory is worth their attention", but likewise thought Diamond oversold geography as an explanation for history and under-emphasized cultural autonomy. McNeill wrote that the book's success "is well-deserved for the first nineteen chapters–excepting a few passages–but that the twentieth chapter carries the argument beyond the breaking point, and excepting a few paragraphs, is not an intellectual success." But McNeill concluded, "While I have sung its praises only in passing and dwelt on its faults, [...] overall I admire the book for its scope, for its clarity, for its erudition across several disciplines, for the stimulus it provides, for its improbable success in making students of international relations believe that prehistory is worth their attention, and, not least, for its compelling illustration that human history is embedded in the larger web of life on earth." Tonio Andrade described McNeill's review as "perhaps the fairest and most succinct summary of professional world historians' perspectives on Guns, Germs, and Steel".

In 2010, Tim Radford of The Guardian called the book "exhilarating" and lauded the passages about plants and animals as "beautifully constructed".

A 2023 study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics assessed Diamond's claims about topography influencing Chinese unification and contributing to European fragmentation. The study's model found that topography was a sufficient condition for the varied outcomes in Asia and Europe, but that it was not a necessary condition.

Criticism
The anthropologist Jason Antrosio described Guns, Germs, and Steel as a form of "academic porn", writing, "Diamond's account makes all the factors of European domination a product of a distant and accidental history" and "has almost no role for human agency—the ability people have to make decisions and influence outcomes. Europeans become inadvertent, accidental conquerors. Natives succumb passively to their fate." He added, "Jared Diamond has done a huge disservice to the telling of human history. He has tremendously distorted the role of domestication and agriculture in that history. Unfortunately his story-telling abilities are so compelling that he has seduced a generation of college-educated readers."

In his last book, published in 2000, the anthropologist and geographer James Morris Blaut criticized Guns, Germs, and Steel, among other reasons, for reviving the theory of environmental determinism, and described Diamond as an example of a modern Eurocentric historian. Blaut criticizes Diamond's loose use of the terms "Eurasia" and "innovative", which he believes misleads the reader into presuming that Western Europe is responsible for technological inventions that arose in the Middle East and Asia.

Other critiques have been made over the author's position on the agricultural revolution. The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture is not necessarily a one-way process. It has been argued, for example in Claude Levi-Strauss's study of the population of the Nambikwara that hunting and gathering represents an adaptive strategy, which may still be exploited, if necessary, when environmental change causes extreme food stress for agriculturalists. In fact, it is sometimes difficult to draw a clear line between agricultural and hunter–gatherer societies, especially since the widespread adoption of agriculture and resulting cultural diffusion that has occurred in the last 10,000 years.

Anthropologist Kerim Friedman wrote: "While it is interesting and important to ask why technologies developed in some countries as opposed to others, I think it overlooks a fundamental issue: the inequality within countries as well as between them." Timothy Burke, an instructor in African history at Swarthmore College wrote: "Anthropologists and historians interested in non-Western societies and Western colonialism also get a bit uneasy with a big-picture explanation of world history that seems to cancel out or radically de-emphasize the importance of the many small differences and choices after 1500 whose effects many of us study carefully."

Economists Daron Acemoğlu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson have written extensively about the effect of political institutions on the economic well-being of former European colonies. Their writing finds evidence that, when controlling for the effect of institutions, the income disparity between nations located at various distances from the equator disappears through the use of a two-stage least squares regression quasi-experiment using settler mortality as an instrumental variable. Their 2001 academic paper explicitly mentions and challenges the work of Diamond, and this critique is brought up again in Acemoğlu and Robinson's 2012 book Why Nations Fail.

The book Questioning Collapse (Cambridge University Press, 2010) is a collection of essays by fifteen archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and historians criticizing various aspects of Diamond's books Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and Guns, Germs and Steel. The book was a result of 2006 meeting of the American Anthropological Association in response to the misinformation that Diamond's popular science publications were causing and the association decided to combine experts from multiple fields of research to cover the claims made in Diamond's and debunk them. The book includes research from indigenous peoples of the societies Diamond discussed as collapsed and also vignettes of living examples of those communities, in order to showcase the main theme of the book on how societies are resilient and change into new forms over time, rather than collapsing.

Awards and honors
Guns, Germs, and Steel won the 1997 Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science. In 1998, it won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, in recognition of its powerful synthesis of many disciplines, and the Royal Society's Rhône-Poulenc Prize for Science Books.

Publication
Guns, Germs, and Steel was first published by W. W. Norton in March 1997. It was published in Great Britain with the title Guns, Germs, and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years by Vintage in 1998. It was a selection of Book of the Month Club, History Book Club, Quality Paperback Book Club, and Newbridge Book Club.

In 2003 and 2007, updated English-language editions were released without changing any conclusions.

The National Geographic Society produced a documentary, starring Jared Diamond, based on the book and of the same title, that was broadcast on PBS in July 2005.

General

 * Cultural ecology
 * Cultural materialism
 * Historical materialism

Books and television

 * Connections (British TV series)
 * The Dawn of Everything
 * Deep Time History
 * The Fates of Nations
 * How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) by Pan-African socialist and historian Walter Rodney
 * Ishmael (Quinn novel)
 * Origins of the State and Civilization (1975) by Elman Service
 * The Outline of History
 * The Rise of the West
 * Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
 * The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (1995) by David Landes
 * Wealth, Poverty and Politics
 * Why Nations Fail

title: Guns, Germs, and Steel


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Who's on First?

"Who's on First?" is a comedy routine made famous by American comedy duo Abbott and Costello. The premise of the sketch is that Abbott is identifying the players on a baseball team for Costello. However, the players' names can simultaneously serve as the basis for questions (e.g., "Who is the first baseman?") and responses (e.g., "The first baseman's name is Who."), leading to reciprocal misunderstanding and growing frustration between the performers. Although it is commonly known as "Who's on First?", Abbott and Costello frequently referred to it simply as "Baseball".

History
"Who's on First?" is descended from minstrel and turn-of-the-century wordplay sketches. One of the most famous was developed by Weber and Fields and called "I Work On Watt Street." Other examples include "The Baker Scene" (the comedian "loafs" at a bakery located on Watt Street) and "Who Dyed" (the business owner is named "Who"). In the 1930 movie Cracked Nuts, comedians Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey examine a map of a mythical kingdom with dialogue like this: "What is next to Which." "What is the name of the town next to Which?" "Yes." In British music halls, comedian Will Hay performed a routine in the early 1930s (and possibly earlier) as a schoolmaster interviewing a schoolboy named Howe, who came from Ware, but now lives in Wye. By the early 1930s, a "Baseball Routine" had become a standard bit in burlesque in the United States. Abbott's wife recalled him performing the routine with another comedian before teaming with Costello.

Bud Abbott stated that it was taken from an older routine called "Who's the Boss?", a performance of which can be heard in an episode of the radio comedy program It Pays to Be Ignorant from the 1940s. After they formally teamed up in burlesque in 1936, he and Costello continued to hone the sketch. It was a big hit in the fall of 1937, when they performed the routine in a touring vaudeville revue called Hollywood Bandwagon.

In February 1938, Abbott and Costello joined the cast of The Kate Smith Hour radio program and the sketch was first performed for a national radio audience on March 24 of that year. The routine may have been further polished before this broadcast by burlesque producer John Grant, who became the team's chief collaborator, and Will Glickman, a staff writer on the Smith show. Glickman may have added the nicknames of then-contemporary baseball players like Dizzy and Daffy Dean to set up the routine's premise. This version, with extensive wordplay based on most of the fictional baseball team's players having "strange nicknames" that seemed to be questions, became known as "Who's on First?" Some versions continue with references to Enos Slaughter, which Costello misunderstands as "He knows" Slaughter. By 1944, Abbott and Costello had the routine copyrighted.

Abbott and Costello performed "Who's on First?" hundreds of times in their careers. Although it was rarely performed precisely the same way twice, the routine follows a definite structure. They did the routine for President Franklin Roosevelt several times. An abridged version was featured in the team's 1940 film debut, One Night in the Tropics. The duo reprised the bit in their 1945 film The Naughty Nineties and it is that longer version which is considered their finest recorded rendition. They also performed "Who's on First?" several times on radio and television (notably in The Abbott and Costello Show episode "The Actor's Home").

In 1956, a gold record of "Who's on First?" was placed in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. A video (taken from The Naughty Nineties) now plays continuously on screens at the Hall.

In the 1970s, Selchow and Righter published a "Who's on First?" board game.

In 1999, Time named the routine Best Comedy Sketch of the 20th Century.

An early radio recording from October 6, 1938, was placed in the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry in 2002.

In 2005, the line "Who's on First?" was included on the American Film Institute's list of 100 memorable movie quotations.

Sketch
The names given in the routine for the players at each position are:

The name of the shortstop is not given until the very end of the routine and the right fielder is never identified. In the Selchow and Righter board game, the right fielder's name is "Nobody".

At one point in the routine, Costello thinks that the first baseman is named "Naturally":

Abbott's explanations leave Costello hopelessly confused and infuriated, until the end of the routine when Costello appears to parody Abbott by saying what appears to be gibberish to him, but accidentally getting it right:

That is the most commonly heard ending. "I Don't Care" and "I Don't Give a Damn" have also turned up on occasion, depending on the perceived sensibilities of the audience. (The performance in the film The Naughty Nineties ends with "I Don't Care.")

The skit was usually performed on the team's radio series at the start of the baseball season. In one instance it serves as a climax for a broadcast which begins with Costello receiving a telegram from Joe DiMaggio asking Costello to take over for him due to his injury. (In this case, the unidentified right fielder would have been Costello himself. While Joe DiMaggio was best known as a center fielder, when Abbott and Costello honed the sketch in 1936–37, Joe DiMaggio had played a number of games at right field (20 in 1936). )

Writing credit
"Who's On First?" evolved from earlier wordplay sketches but it is not known who transposed the basic wordplay to baseball, although numerous people have claimed or been given credit for it. Such claims typically lack reasonable corroboration. For example, a 1993 obituary of comedy sketch writer Michael J. Musto (1919–1993) states that, shortly after Abbott and Costello teamed up, they paid Musto $15 to write the script. Musto would have been 17 when Abbott and Costello teamed in 1936. Furthermore, several 1996 obituaries of songwriter Irving Gordon (1915–1996) mention that he had written the sketch. Gordon would have been 21 in 1936.

Copyright infringement case
In 2015, the heirs of Abbott and Costello filed a federal copyright infringement lawsuit in the Southern District of New York claiming unauthorized use of over a minute of the comedy routine in the play Hand to God. The suit named producer Kevin McCollum, playwright Robert Askins, and the promoters as defendants. The defense claimed that the underlying "Who's on First?" routine was in the public domain because the original authors, Abbott and Costello, were not the ones who filed a copyright renewal, but the court did not see the need to make a final determination on that. The court ruled against the heirs, saying that the use by the play was transformative.

On appeal, the Second Circuit affirmed the district court in 2016 but for the other reason. The one minute of the routine used in the play did not constitute transformative fair use, since it was a significant portion and was taken word for word. But that was moot since the court also found that the heirs had failed to establish that they owned the copyright. (The court did not reach the issue of whether the routine had entered the public domain since the parties had apparently stipulated that they believed its copyright term was coterminous with One Night in the Tropics, where it had first been published for purposes of copyright law at that time). The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari on the case in 2017.

Derivatives and references in popular culture
The sketch has been reprised, updated, alluded to and parodied many times over the decades in all forms of media. Some examples include:

 * The comedy troupe The Credibility Gap (1968–1979) did a rock group variation on this routine involving a promoter, played by Harry Shearer and a newspaper advertising salesman, played by David L. Lander, confusing the night's acts as proper nouns. The acts were The Who, The Guess Who and Yes.
 * Eugene Levy and Tony Rosato performed a variation on this theme on the TV series SCTV (1976–1984), with the rock groups The Band, The Who and Yes. The final punchline changed to "This is for the birds (The Byrds)!" "Ah, they broke up long ago!"
 * Episode six of the fourth season of WKRP in Cincinnati (1981) is entitled "Who's on First?". It revolves around Mr. Carlson being mistaken for Herb Tarlek, and to "prove Andy wrong" Les Nessman is then convinced to act as Mr. Carlson. When a thug named Dave shows up to confront Johnny about an unpaid gambling debt, Johnny Fever claims Andy Travis' identity, while Mr. Carlson refers to Andy as "Johnny" ... with painful consequences for Andy.
 * Author and poet Shel Silverstein's poem "The Meehoo with an Exactlywatt", featured in his 1981 poetry collection A Light in the Attic, is stated in the afterword by Silverstein himself to have been inspired by Abbott and Costello's routine.
 * The biography of Lou Costello written by his daughter Chris is titled Lou's on First (1982).
 * In the mid-1980s, Johnny Carson's spoof of then-president Ronald Reagan preparing for a press briefing included "Hu is on the phone", a reference to fictional Chinese leader Chung Dong Hu. Reagan also misunderstands references to Secretary of the Interior James Watt (misheard as "what") and PLO leader Yassir Arafat (misheard as "Yes sir").
 * In the 1988 film Rain Man, the film's titular character, played by Dustin Hoffman, stims by reciting the skit to himself whenever his brother Charlie, played by Tom Cruise, makes him anxious by meddling with his personal effects.
 * In the Animaniacs segment "Woodstock Slappy" (1994), Slappy and Skippy Squirrel attend the 1969 Woodstock Festival, where they pay homage to the routine. Similar to the SCTV version, Slappy confuses The Who, The Band and Yes for proper nouns.
 * In the Invasion of the Neptune Men episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 in 1998, during one host segment, Mike and the 'Bots put on a Who's on First-themed skit concerning Japanese Noh Theater.
 * Mad Magazine's February 1999 issue featured an article (written by Desmond Devlin and illustrated by Mort Drucker) of Abbott and Costello trying to organize MTV's music video library, with Costello getting confused by the names of songs such as "Give Me One Reason", "You Oughta Know", "Ironic", "What You Want", "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", "Don't Speak", "If It Makes You Happy", "Stop" and "Quit Playing Games". The names of bands U2 and No Doubt also cause confusion.
 * In The Simpsons episode "Marge Simpson in: 'Screaming Yellow Honkers', (1999) Superintendent Chalmers and Principal Skinner attempt to perform the routine, but Chalmers gives up after Skinner explains the joke with his first line: "Not the pronoun, but rather a player with the unlikely name of "Who" is on first."
 * In The PJ's episode "The HJs", (2000) Thurgood reopens the apartment building's radio station and forms an unexpected comedy team with the community's beloved crack addict, Smokey. They parody the comedy bit with Smokey saying, "Who's on crack, Say What's on smack, and I Don't Know is on freebase."
 * In the Family Guy episode "Extra Large Medium", Peter Griffin, in his psychic routine, attempts to solve a case for the police (namely, a person being buried alive with a bomb attached to him) by "summoning the spirit" of Lou Costello. He and the police officer, Joe Swanson, then reenact the routine when it's revealed the person's name is Melvin Hu. Unfortunately, they do the scene so long that the bomb explodes and kills him, at which time Peter dropped the act and admitted he wasn't a psychic.
 * In 2002, playwright Jim Sherman wrote a variation called "Hu's on First" featuring George W. Bush being confused when Condoleezza Rice tells him that the new leader of China is named Hu, pronounced similarly to the word "Who". Bush also misunderstands Rice's references to Yassir Arafat ("yes, sir") and Kofi Annan ("coffee").
 * In the Get Fuzzy comic for September 12, 2005, an injured Rob asks Satchel to use speed dial to call "Dr Watt", who is second on the speed dial list after Dr. Hu. Satchel gleefully replies "Third Base!", much to Rob's annoyance.
 * In the 2007 film Rush Hour 3, LAPD Detective James Carter (Chris Tucker) visits a Kung Fu studio where he meets Master Yu and an instructor named Mi. Carter, Yu and Mi engage in a comedic back and forth in which they confuse the names Yu and Mi with the words "you" and "me".
 * In 2007, Canadian Internet comedy group LoadingReadyRun released a parody called It's Very Simple.
 * Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, in December 2012, featured a variation of the routine called "Who's on First?: The Sequel". Depicted with vintage touches (black and white images, retro costumes, etc.), the skit finds host Jimmy Fallon in the Bud Abbott role and announcer Steve Higgins as Lou Costello. The twist here is that "Who", "What" and "I Don't Know" actually join in on the quick repartee, with the players respectively played by Billy Crystal, Late Night head writer A. D. Miles and Jerry Seinfeld.
 * In Bojack Horseman episode "Downer Ending", (2014) a group of characters gets confused by a doctor named Allan Hu, pronounced similarly to the word "Who". Later in the scene, the characters exclaim "Third base!".
 * The October 19, 2014, strip of the comic Pearls Before Swine sees Rat ask Goat "Whose drummer was Keith Moon?" Goat responds that he is correct, although Rat does not understand that Goat is telling him Moon was the drummer for The Who. It leads to a routine of more confusions, including Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones, Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, Steve Howe of Yes and Pete Townshend – also of The Who. Thinking Goat is asking what band Townshend is the guitarist for, an exasperated Rat screams "I don't know!" Goat replies "Third base!" The final panel sees the still-exasperated Rat threatening to hit the comic's author Stephan Pastis with a baseball bat, asking "When would you like this hit?". Pastis responds "Winwood's the guitarist for Traffic."
 * The 2015 puzzle video game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes features a module officially referred to on page 9 of the Bomb Defusal Manual V1 as Who's on First. Its description reads: "This contraption is like something out of a sketch comedy routine, which might be funny if it wasn't connected to a bomb. I’ll keep this brief, as words only complicate matters". The module works similarly to the routine, in which the Defuser must recite the word that appears on the module's display to the Expert. The Expert must then follow the steps in the manual to tell the Defuser which button to press. The reference comes in the form of the words that appear on the module's buttons, some of them being homophones of other words that may appear, an example being the words there, they're and their, thus resulting in a similar confusion to that of the sketch.
 * In 2017, Studio C made a spin-off of this as a sketch in their seventh season, titled Detective Doctor, At Your Service, where several characters have names such as Detective Doctor, Doctor Hisbrother and Officer Wounded, making the scene of an attempted murder much more confusing to deal with.
 * Emcee duo Blanche Debris and Jonny Porkpie did an adaptation of the sketch at the 2017 Burlesque Hall of Fame weekender and reunion, recontextualized as the lineup for a burlesque show.
 * In season 11 of All That (2019), the "Good Burger" sketch used the routine, in which Kel Mitchell's character Ed became confused when musical guest H.E.R. walked in to place an order after she told him who she was.

 * A variant of unknown origin, called "Abbot and Costello do Hebrew", is popular in the Jewish American community. Its humor draws from the homophonic similarity of a number of words in English – hu, he, me, ma and dag are homophones of the Hebrew words for he, she, who, what and fish respectively.
 * The skit is an easter egg on Google Assistant, Siri, Amazon Alexa and Bixby. Asking Google Assistant "OK Google, Who's on first?" will lead to the response "Yes, he is." or "Exactly." Siri responds "Correct. Who is on first." Alexa responds "That's what I keep telling you. Who's on first, What's on second." Bixby responds "I think Who gets the ball and throws it to What."
 * There are several American restaurants named "Who's on First", located on 1st Street or 1st Avenue of their respective cities, including New York City, Waconia, MN and Snohomish, WA
 * In the spring split of 2022, League Championship Series casters Azael and Captain Flowers performed a spin-off of the skit using "River" and "Blue", the tags of two players from the esports team Dignitas as well as the river location and blue jungle camp on Summoner's Rift.

Real-life parallels
On several occasions, players with names phonetically similar to the characters in the sketch reached the appropriate bases as runners, or defended them as infielders:
 * On October 3, 1920, Allie Watt played one game at second base for the Washington Senators so that, for a brief time, "Watt's on second".
 * During a May 31, 1966, game against the Minnesota Twins, relief-pitcher Eddie Watt of the Baltimore Orioles led off the 5th inning with his only career double, again creating a "Watt's on second" situation.
 * In September 2007, Los Angeles Dodgers shortstop Chin-Lung Hu, a late-season callup from Las Vegas, got his first major league hit against the Arizona Diamondbacks, a single; Dodgers announcer Vin Scully said "Shades of Abbott and Costello, I can finally say, 'Hu is on first base.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Who's on First?


text:
Talk:Guns, Germs, and Steel

See Also section is a mess
I'm becoming more and more of the opinion that See Also sections should be a section of least and last resort. The section in this article is a clear example of an arbitrary assemblage of links that only tenuously relate to the article topic. I would boldly remove it, but I instead come here to gather consensus. 71.9.31.123 (talk) 15:04, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

 * I’m interested in hearing some specific information. Which links do you consider irrelevant? Are any of them relevant to you? (Not saying I disagree, just curious to hear more details. I agree it’s pretty damn long). Euor (talk) 15:17, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

 * If I may stick my nose in here, I'd like to say, first, I agree that the section is a mess, and includes a lot of not paricularly relevant links. For me, personally, GG&S started me on a path of reading many of the most highly regarded books on "deep history", including Yuval Harari and The Dawn of Everything, so I definitely think they should be kept in the section. There may be other entries that should be kept for the same reason. Paulmlieberman (talk) 19:58, 1 May 2022 (UTC)
 * My own contribution is the "Sword, Plough and Book" one, which was mentioned in the Norwegian edition of Guns, Germs and Steel's foreword by anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen. He among other things noted the parallels between the book titles. However, that book doesn't have its own wiki page, nor even really much mention on the author's wiki page, so I don't know if its worth keeping or not (on one hand its highlighted as related to Guns Germs and Steel in a publication, on the other hand it doesn't have much presence on Wiki yet).--Euor (talk) 23:36, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Speaking generally, every link in the See Also would be embedded within the article itself, if it were actually relevant to the article. Otherwise, adding the relevant category to the article might provide the appropriate level of interlinking. If more organized relationships need to be codified and defined, then a template at the bottom or the right side of the article might be appropriate. While I find all three (See Also, Categories, and Templates) to be dancing on the head of the OR pin, the later two are at least more organized and structured. 99.152.115.208 (talk) 05:20, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I think you can just go ahead and trim it if you want. There's no need for prior consensus. – Joe (talk) 09:31, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Reception
Does anybody else think the positive to negative reception ratio seems very biased? I'm fairly certain it was more negatively received than this (among Diamond's other works). Talking to all the anthropology professors I know, the consensus seems to overwhelmingly be that Diamond is a kook. Thornfield Hall (talk) 06:22, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Kathleen Lowrey
One editor removed the Kathleen Lowrey quote (edit summary: Removed a brief section of factually erroneous and unserious criticism which does not address the actual content of the book.). Another editor restored the content.

I don't necessarily agree with the remover's edit summary, but I do question the relevance of that quote to the article because the cited source says Lowrey, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Alberta, offended many readers by saying that she hadn't bothered to finish Guns, Germs, and Steel Schazjmd   (talk)  22:39, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
 * , please discuss the section in dispute here rather than continuing to revert each other. Schazjmd   (talk)  15:19, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Its quite simple, not a word of @Tyrone Jahirs edit summary make sense or is correct whatsoever. @Schazjmd SpaceExplorer12 (talk) 15:53, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Ignore the edit summary. Can you address why you believe the comment of someone who didn't "bother" to even finish the book is relevant to the article? Schazjmd   (talk)  15:57, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
 * It is relevant as it is many concern and disagreement with the book. Wikipedi ais neutral and should have things expressing support and dissent for the book. This is a useful piece of dissent and is important to understanding all sides of the arguement here @Schazjmd SpaceExplorer12 (talk) 15:59, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
 * There is extensive criticism of the book in the article. Why is the quote from someone who didn't read it of value? Schazjmd   (talk)  16:04, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Where do you see that they didnt read it? @Schazjmd SpaceExplorer12 (talk) 16:08, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
 * It's in the source. I quoted it in my first comment to this thread. Schazjmd   (talk)  16:11, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
 * They read some of it and didnt like it (and therefore stopped), stating good critism of the book. Is that not worthwhile to include? @Schazjmd SpaceExplorer12 (talk) 16:14, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't think someone who didn't even finish the book is giving a solid, thoughtful review worth quoting in the article about the book. (Also, I'm watching this page, please don't ping me on every comment, thanks.) Schazjmd   (talk)  16:18, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I think that is a reasonable opinion that deserves to be in the article SpaceExplorer12 (talk) 16:19, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I disagree. If you read the source, Friedman's and Burke's criticisms of the book are given more weight and are based more in academic critique than Lowrey's. Cherry-picking from the source the one quote that seems more incendiary than reasoned does a disservice to this article. I'd suggest replacing Lowrey's quote with content about what Friedman and Burke had to say. Schazjmd   (talk)  16:35, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
 * If you wish SpaceExplorer12 (talk) 16:36, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Done. Schazjmd   (talk)  16:43, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I saw that Lowrey's criticism was removed, which is good, but I will still put my talk reply to SpaceExplorer12 here because he is wrong, and my summary of Lowrey's criticism is accurate.
 * The criticism in question comes from anthropologist Kathleen Lowrey, who says that Guns, Germs, and Steel "lets the West off the hook" and "poisonously whispers: mope about colonialism, slavery, capitalism, racism, and predatory neo-imperialism all you want, but these were/are nobody's fault. This is a wicked cop-out. [...] It basically says [non-Western cultures/societies] are sorta pathetic, but that bless their hearts, they couldn't/can't help it."
 * Here, Lowrey is accusing Diamond of using his conclusions about the power of the environment in shaping civilizational development to absolve the European powers of culpability for their colonial atrocities. This is factually erroneous. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond consistently acknolwedges the profound injustices and suffering caused by European colonialism. He emphasizes that the conquests, violence, and destruction of indigenous cultures were unjustifiable outcomes of historical interactions. Diamond explicitly denounces the kind of thinking Lowrey accuses him of:
 * 1. "If we succeed in explaining how some people came to dominate other people, may this not seem to justify the domination? Doesn't it seem to say that the outcome was inevitable, and that it would therefore be futile to try to change the outcome today? This objection rests on a common tendency to confuse an explanation of causes with a justification or acceptance of results. What use one makes of a historical explanation is a question separate from the explanation itself."
 * 2. "Understanding is more often used to try to alter an outcome than to repeat or perpetuate it. That's why psychologists try to understand the minds of murderers and rapists, why social historians try to understand genocide, and why physicians try to understand the causes of human disease. '''Those investigators do not seek to justify murder, rape, genocide, and illness. instead, they seek to use their understanding of a chain of causes to interrupt the chain."
 * Lowrey's critisim is unserious exactly because it does not address the content/substance of Diamond's book. The arguments put forward in Guns, Germs, and Steel are not an absoluton of Europeans for their colonialism, they are an explanation of how the European powers were able to colonize indigenous peoples in other lands, instead of indigenous peoples in other lands colonizing them.
 * 1. "Thus, we can finally rephrase the question about the modern world's inequalities as follows: why did human development proceed at such different rates on different continents? Those disparate rates constitute history's broadest pattern and my book's subject."
 * At no point in the book does Diamond claim anything like "European colonization was inevitable" or that "European powers aren't ultimately responsible for the atrocities they committed." In fact, he refutes this kind of thinking in the prologue, chapters 3 and 11. Tyrone Jahir (talk) 11:55, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
 * At no point in the book does Diamond claim anything like "European colonization was inevitable" or that "European powers aren't ultimately responsible for the atrocities they committed." In fact, he refutes this kind of thinking in the prologue, chapters 3 and 11. Tyrone Jahir (talk) 11:55, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Critical response
Hello. In its current state, the article does not mention the critical response from academia enough. Guns, Germs and Steel is very eurocentric, and the racism it combats is archaic at best. The book is generally seen as pop history, and overly simplistic. Its a work of vulgarisation with a wonderful style. It is essentially the eurocentric counterpart to 1491: New revelations about the Americas before Columbus, somewhat more reliable, but also considered pop science. In general Guns, Germs and steal 'discovered' nothing, thats just not how it works. Encyclopédisme (talk) 17:08, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

 * Hello. If anything, the "criticsm" section is biased against Diamond, and was vulgarly so until not too long ago. Before I successfully argued for its removal, the section included criticism from Kathleen Lowry, an academic who admitted to not even finishing the book, and made claims about Diamond's views that are contradicted within its opening pages. Thankfully, it was replaced with examples of serious criticisms, but honestly, the first paragraph of the section as it exists should definitely be removed as well.
 * While any kind of controversial academic work will be subject to widespread criticism (and rightfully so), the specific veins of criticism you refer to (book is eurocentric, book is racist, etc.) are transparently politically motivated. They're not serious criticisms and never have been.
 * If you want to add more criticism, by all means do so, but we should hold the article to a high standard by including as much criticism like the bottom four paragraphs as possible, and as little criticism like the top two paragraphs (and the Lowry paragraph) as possible. Tyrone Jahir (talk) 12:22, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * 'Politically motivated'.. listen I principally edit about the inca and I can tell you that the idea of this book doing anything more than getting out some popular misconceptions and getting some, some, new ideas in, is not supported by most academics specialized in Andean America and Mesoamerica. And even tho I don't know much about it, I bet most scholars of north american native history think the same. And yes, I do plan to add some criticism. If a book is seen critically by so many academics, then thats enough reasons to have a long criticism section. Imagine if we applied the logic you proposed to psychoanalysis. I am not saying we should break neutrality, but that this article needs a longer criticism section, since this book was not reviewed positively by many academics working in the field. Encyclopédisme (talk) 12:45, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Politically motivated indeed. Criticisms need to engage with the content they're attempting to criticize if they're to be serious/worth including. What exactly is flawed with that logic? The book was reviewed positively by many academics working in the field. By your logic, this alone warrants extending the praise section too.
 * If we're being serious, the book was positively reviewed, and also not positively reviewed. Such is the nature of a controversial book. We could find just as many negative reviews to match positive ones and vice versa, so what's the solution? We should ensure that both the praise and criticism is as high quality and serious (actually addresses the content of the work) as it can be.
 * As I said, I welcome extending the criticism page, but it should be with serious criticisms and not unserious ones. Tyrone Jahir (talk) 13:33, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The problem is this book has received a lot of criticism from the academic community. Period. Reliable sources, not 'serious' criticism, are critical of the work. In other words we need to put a little more emphasis on the fact this book is extremely controversial, the main accusation being over-simplification, among many, many others. We need to do this to ensure the articles neutrality in fact. I don't engage myself with this subject often, tho i've read the book, in fact I actually edit more about pre-columbian cultures than about this. Heck, before this account I edited under ip for a couple of years, and never on this. On the other hand, while it would be nice to assume good faith, I could accuse you of being taken in by the authors thesis, and of pov-pushing. I don't want to have a heated discussion here either, I took this to the talk page to see if there are any objections, and there seems to be none, aside from you. But you don't have a problem with me adding some new criticism, so I guess we agree on that. Cheers. Encyclopédisme (talk) 13:44, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The book has received a lot of praise from the academic community. Period. Reliable sources are commending of the work... Do you see the problem with this kind of reasoning? The statement you made and the statement I made are both true. We need a better way to establish what's worth including.
 * Let me be plain: Emphasizing that the book was controversial is reasonable, adding serious and relevant criticism is reasonable. Adding criticism for the sake of adding criticism is low quality editing.
 * "While it would be nice to assume good faith, I could accuse you of being taken in by the authors thesis, and of pov-pushing."
 * Resorting to this kind of tactic doesn't reflect well on your intentions here. I've accused you of nothing like this. I assume good faith. I've been polite. As for objections, you posted your proposition just two days ago. The fact that anyone has responded on a page this obscure is an anomaly.
 * If you want to bring more attention to the book's controversy, that's something that can be stated rather than implied through adding criticisms for the sake of doing so. If you're going to add criticims, I urge you to make sure they are serious. That's all. Tyrone Jahir (talk) 14:12, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Your clearly pov-pushing. I am professionally engaged with the Inca civilization, for exemple, and I don't like it. Seriously. I admit my first comment was a bit hard, but can we not accuse each other of these types of things.
 * The problem is, again, it is very controversial. I don't think your very familiar with Wp guidelines. What matters isn't your logic. Psychoanalysis, again isn't shown as a pseudoscience, despite the reasoning of many new editors on the talk page. It is criticized. Period. It would be a lack of neutrality to ignore the backlash to an academic work by many of the academic community. The book has received praise obviously, otherwise we wouldn't be here. Less obviously, it has received immense criticism, and for good reason. Many of its postulats don't correspond with those given by the consensus of academic works on the Aztecs or Inca peoples for exemple. That is an issue, you know. The basic idea of contact between old world civilizations being bigger than contact between new world civilizations was already seen as fact, and is used to explain culturally isolated systems of sociopolitical organisation like that of the Andes. But technology being the reason for expansion is an image starting to fade away. The lede paragraphe of this article suggests that it was mainstream academic practice to claim European genetic superiority. Peace? Encyclopédisme (talk) 14:23, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * There must be some kind of language barrier here, because a lot of what you're saying isn't a very coherent response to what I'm saying.
 * In what way am I POV-pushing? What "logic" am I using that is flawed? When did I say the book did not receive criticism for good reasons? When did I say you couldn't criticize GGS or add criticisms to the page?
 * "Many of its postulats don't correspond with those given by the consensus of academic works on the Aztecs or Inca peoples for exemple."
 * That is the exactly the kind of criticism I think should be added if you can get a reliable source for it, but that's different from what you said in your first comment. Eurocentrism, for example, is an unserious criticism. My main point was only that we should strive to ensure the content of the section is serious/high-quality. Tyrone Jahir (talk) 14:49, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Good, then were in total agreement. By logic, I meant expressing opinions (which I also did, tho) to justify that or this edit, instead of following guideline. In this case weight needs to be respected, criticism is huge. You seem to edit a lot in favor of the authors thesis is what I meant to say about the pov-pushing. Cheers, and happy editing. Encyclopédisme (talk) 14:53, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Sure, but I'm not trying to edit in favor of Diamond's thesis, I am trying to make sure included criticisms are actually criticisms of Diamond's thesis/work and not something else the work doesn't say. Good luck with your editing. Tyrone Jahir (talk) 15:34, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Oswald Spengler
Oswald Spengler offers another possible explanation [which may or may not be correct] as to why advanced civilisations arose only in specific places on our planet (but did not do so in New Guinea or precolonial Australia, which Jared D cites for comparison). Spengler's thesis regards a High Culture as a living organic unit in its own right.

Spengler maintains that the "seed" of a High Culture (as a new organic, spiritual entity) appeared in western Europe round about 500 AD. About 400 years later it started to "blossom", and proceeded to influence and stimulate the leading minds in that area.

Earlier on, similar "higher organisms" appeared and flourished in China, in India, in and around Greece, in Persia/Arabia, in Mexico/Guatemala, and elsewhere.

Spengler is of course adopting a metaphysical approach to the question. We do not know why those phenomena "took root" just at those times and in those particular locations. Obviously, they could not function unless they had human material available (which could be regarded as forming the "cells" in its body). Thus, the Nile, the Tigris/Euphrates and the Indus river system were eminently suitable for the first three manifestations. --DLMcN (talk) 21:03, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Guns, Germs, and Steel


text:
George Clinton (funk musician)

George Edward Clinton (born July 22, 1941 ) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer and bandleader. His Parliament-Funkadelic collective (which primarily recorded under the distinct band names Parliament and Funkadelic) developed an influential and eclectic form of funk music during the 1970s that drew on Afrofuturism, outlandish fashion, psychedelia, and surreal humor. He launched his solo career with the 1982 album Computer Games and would go on to influence 1990s hip-hop and G-funk.

Clinton is regarded, along with James Brown and Sly Stone, as one of the foremost innovators of funk music. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, alongside 15 other members of Parliament-Funkadelic. In 2019, he and Parliament-Funkadelic were given Grammy Lifetime Achievement Awards.

Beginnings
George Edward Clinton was born in Kannapolis, North Carolina, grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey, and currently resides in Tallahassee, Florida. During his teen years, Clinton formed a doo-wop group inspired by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers called the Parliaments, while straightening hair at a barbershop in Plainfield, New Jersey.

The West End of Plainfield was once home to a barbershop on 216 Plainfield Avenue known as "Silk Palace". Owned in part by Clinton, it was staffed by various members of Parliament-Funkadelic, and known as the "hangout for all the local singers and musicians" in Plainfield's 1950s and 1960s doo-wop, soul, rock, and proto-funk music scene.

1960s and 1970s
For a period in the 1960s Clinton was a staff songwriter for Motown. Despite initial commercial failure and one major hit single ("(I Wanna) Testify" in 1967), as well as arranging and producing scores of singles on many of the independent Detroit soul music labels, the Parliaments eventually found success under the names Parliament and Funkadelic in the 1970s (see also P-Funk). These two bands combined the elements of musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone, Frank Zappa, and James Brown while exploring various sounds, technology, and lyricism. Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic dominated Black music during the 1970s, with over 40 R&B hit singles (including three number ones) and three platinum albums.

From 1971 to late 1973, Clinton and several other members of the band settled in Toronto. During their years in Toronto, they honed their live show and recorded the album America Eats Its Young, which was their first to feature Bootsy Collins.

1980s
In the 1980s, Clinton began to encounter legal difficulties arising from PolyGram's acquisition of Parliament's label, Casablanca Records. He recorded several solo albums, although all of these records featured contributions from P-Funk's core musicians. This period of Clinton's career was marred by multiple legal problems resulting in financial difficulties due to royalty and copyright issues, notably with Bridgeport Music, who Clinton claims fraudulently obtained the copyrights to many of his recordings.

In 1982, Clinton was signed to Capitol Records under two names: his own as a solo artist, and as the P-Funk All-Stars, releasing Computer Games under his own name that same year. The single "Loopzilla" hit the Top 20 on the R&B charts, followed by "Atomic Dog", which reached #1 R&B and #101 on the pop chart. In the next four years, Clinton released three more studio albums (You Shouldn't-Nuf Bit Fish, Some of My Best Jokes Are Friends, and R&B Skeletons in the Closet) as well as a live album, Mothership Connection (Live from the Summit, Houston, Texas) and charting three singles in the R&B Top 30, "Nubian Nut", "Last Dance", and "Do Fries Go with That Shake?"

He is also a notable music producer who works on almost all the albums he performs on, and has produced albums for Bootsy Collins and Red Hot Chili Peppers, among others. In 1985, he was recruited by the Chili Peppers to produce their album Freaky Styley, because the band members were huge fans of his and of funk in general. Clinton wrote the vocals and lyrics to the title track, which was originally intended by the band to be left as an instrumental piece. The album was not a commercial success at the time. In 1987, Clinton was recruited to write the theme song for The Tracey Ullman Show, "You're Thinking Right".

During the mid to late 1980s, many hip-hop and rap artists cited Clinton's earlier music as an influence. Along with James Brown, Clinton's songs with Parliament-Funkadelic were often sampled by rap producers. "Sure, sample my stuff…" he remarked in 1996; "Ain't a better time to get paid than when you're my age. You know what to do with money. You don't buy as much pussy or drugs with it – you just buy some."

In 1989, Clinton released The Cinderella Theory on Paisley Park, Prince's record label.

1990s to 2000s

Clinton continued his work with Paisley Park with Hey, Man, Smell My Finger in 1993. The year 1994 saw Clinton contribute to several tracks on Primal Scream's studio album Give Out But Don't Give Up. In 1995, Clinton sang "Mind Games" on the John Lennon tribute Working Class Hero. Clinton then signed with Sony 550 and released T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M. (The Awesome Power of a Fully Operational Mothership) in 1996.

Clinton appeared in films such as Graffiti Bridge (1990), House Party (1990), PCU (1994), Good Burger (1997), and The Breaks (1999). In 1994, he appeared as the host of the anthology television film Cosmic Slop. In 1997, he appeared as himself in the Cartoon Network show Space Ghost Coast to Coast. Clinton also appeared as the voice of the Funktipus, the DJ of the funk radio station Bounce FM in the 2004 video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, in which his song "Loopzilla" also appeared.

Rapper Dr. Dre often sampled Clinton's music, helping to bring about the G-funk era. In 1999, Clinton collaborated with Lil' Kim and Fred Durst for rap metal group Methods of Mayhem's single "Get Naked".

Displaying his influence on rap and hip hop, Clinton also worked with Tupac Shakur on the song "Can't C Me" from the album All Eyez on Me; Ice Cube on the song and video for "Bop Gun (One Nation)" on the Lethal Injection album (which sampled Funkadelic's earlier hit "One Nation Under a Groove"); Outkast on the song "Synthesizer" from the album Aquemini; Redman on the song "J.U.M.P." from the album Malpractice; Souls of Mischief on "Mama Knows Best" from the album Trilogy: Conflict, Climax, Resolution; Killah Priest on "Come With me" from the album Priesthood; the Wu-Tang Clan on "Wolves" from the album 8 Diagrams.

Clinton founded a record label called The C Kunspyruhzy in 2003. He had a cameo appearance in "Where Were We?", the season two premiere of the CBS television sitcom How I Met Your Mother, on September 18, 2006.

He appeared on the intro to Snoop Dogg's Tha Blue Carpet Treatment album, released in 2007. Clinton was also a judge for the 5th annual Independent Music Awards.

On September 16, 2008, Clinton released a solo album, George Clinton and His Gangsters of Love, on Shanachie Records. Largely a covers album, Gangsters features guest appearances from Sly Stone, El DeBarge, Red Hot Chili Peppers, RZA, Carlos Santana, gospel singer Kim Burrell and more.

On September 10, 2009, Clinton was awarded the Urban Icon Award from Broadcast Music Incorporated. The ceremony featured P-Funk associate Bootsy Collins, as well contemporary performers such as Big Boi from Outkast and Cee-Lo Green from Goodie Mob.

Also in 2009, Clinton was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame.

2010s to 2020s
On March 7, 2010, Clinton voiced a colorful blob alien version of himself in T-Pain's Adult Swim television movie Freaknik: The Musical.

In May 2012, Clinton was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music. During the commencement concert, Clinton joined the college's P-Funk Ensemble to perform hits like "Testify," "Give Up the Funk," and "One Nation Under a Groove". He was accompanied by longtime horn players Bennie Cowan and Greg Thomas.

Clinton was a guest star in Odd Future's television show Loiter Squad on Adult Swim in 2013.

On June 27, 2015, Clinton joined Mark Ronson, Mary J. Blige and Grandmaster Flash on stage at the Glastonbury Festival to perform Ronson's hit "Uptown Funk". Clinton also appears with Kendrick Lamar on the song "Wesley's Theory" from the album To Pimp a Butterfly.

In March 2017, Clinton appeared on the Adult Swim television series FishCenter Live. The Outline's Samuel Argyle described it as "[t]he episode that makes the most cohesive narrative sense."

Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic were slated to headline the seventh annual Treefort Music Fest in Boise, Idaho in 2018. The release of a new Parliament album, Medicaid Fraud Dogg, was announced in March 2018. It was released May 22, 2018.

In April 2018, Clinton announced that he would retire from touring in May 2019. Billboard reported that Clinton had recently undergone pacemaker surgery, but he said that was not a factor in his decision. He indicated that he expected Parliament-Funkadelic would continue to tour without him, saying "Truth be told, it's never really been about me. It's always been about the music and the band. That's the real P-Funk legacy. They'll still be funkin' long after I stop." Earlier in 2018, he told Rolling Stone that he had made a hologram, suggesting that the band could "have it start performing in Vegas".

In December 2018, the Recording Academy announced that Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic would be given Lifetime Achievement Awards. The awards were presented on May 11, 2019.

Clinton collaborated with Flying Lotus on his new album Flamagra released on May 24, 2019. The track "Burning Down the House" was co-written by Clinton.

Clinton also provided the voice of King Quincy, leader of the funk trolls, in the 2020 animated film, Trolls World Tour.

In 2022, Clinton competed in season eight of The Masked Singer as "Gopher". After being eliminated on "Hall of Fame Night" alongside George Foreman as "Venus Fly Trap", Clinton did a performance of "Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)" while backed up by Sheila E., Nick Cannon, and Robin Thicke. He also exhibited paintings and sculptures in a solo show at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in Los Angeles with artist Lauren Halsey.

Personal life
Clinton married Stephanie Lynn Clinton in 1990. In February 2013, after 22 years of marriage, he filed for divorce.

Clinton is married to Carlon Thompson-Clinton, his manager of over 10 years.

On February 1, 2010, Clinton's 50-year-old son, George Clinton Jr., was found dead in his Florida home. According to police, he died of natural causes and had been dead for several days.

Clinton was inducted as an honorary member of Omega Psi Phi on July 30, 2020.

Clinton received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Clinton College in Rock Hill, SC on May 3, 2024.

Contributions

 * 1981: "Work That Sucker to Death" (Xavier featuring George Clinton and Bootsy Collins; Point of Pleasure)
 * 1983: "I Almost Believed You" (from the Michael Bolton album Michael Bolton)
 * 1985: "American Ghost Dance" (sang backing vocals with the Red Hot Chili Peppers on their album Freaky Styley; he also produced this album)
 * 1985: "May the Cube Be With You" (collaborated with Thomas Dolby and appeared in the music video for the song)
 * 1985: "Sun City" (from the Artists United Against Apartheid album Sun City)
 * 1986: "Break My Heart" (Jimmy G. & the Tackheads; one of his many one-off groups with George Clinton supplying vocals & possibly Bootsy Collins on bass)
 * 1986: "Magilla Gorilla" (from the Kurtis Blow album Kingdom Blow)
 * 1988: "Lifestyles of the Roach and Famous by the INCorporated Thang Band (Produced by George Clinton and Bootsy Collins. Songs co-wrote by George Clinton)
 * 1990: "We Can Funk" (from the Prince album Graffiti Bridge)
 * 1990: House Party (George Clinton, as himself)
 * 1991: "Ju Ju Man (Rock the Planet)", "Dysfunktion", "Air Head", and "Freedom of Speech" (from the Muruga UFM album Rock the Planet)
 * 1991: "Sons of the P" (from the Digital Underground album Sons of the P)
 * 1991: "Words & Music from da Lowlands" (from the Gotcha! album Words and Music from da Lowlands)
 * 1993: "G-Funk Intro" (from the Snoop Doggy Dogg album Doggystyle)
 * 1993: "Tight" (from the MC Breed album The New Breed)
 * 1994: PCU (George Clinton, as himself)
 * 1993: "Bop Gun (One Nation)" (from the Ice Cube album Lethal Injection)
 * 1994: "P-Funk" (NBA Jam; hidden character)
 * 1994: "Funky Jam", "Give Out But Don't Give Up" and "Free" (from the Primal Scream album Give Out But Don't Give Up)
 * 1995: "Blac Mermaid" (from the Society of Soul album Brainchild)
 * 1996: "Can't C Me" (from the 2Pac album All Eyez on Me)
 * 1997: Good Burger (Mental Patient/Dancer)
 * 1998: "Synthesizer" (from the Outkast album Aquemini)
 * 1999: "Get Naked" (from the Methods of Mayhem album Methods of Mayhem)
 * 2000: "Alien Love" (from the Alien Lovestock album Planet of the Fish)
 * 2001: "Come With Me", "The One" (from the Killah Priest album Priesthood)
 * 2001: "Speed Dreaming" (from the Warren G album The Return of the Regulator)
 * 2001: "J.U.M.P." (from the Redman album Malpractice)
 * 2002: "The Movie" (from the Too Short album What's My Favorite Word?)
 * 2003: "Hey Bulldog" (from the Eric McFadden album Diamonds To Coal)
 * 2005: "Lotus Flower" (from the Blackalicious album The Craft)
 * 2006: "Uncle Speaks (Album Naration)" (from the Joi album Tennessee Slim Is the Bomb)
 * 2006: "Intrology" (from the Snoop Dogg album Tha Blue Carpet Treatment)
 * 2006: "The Doctor and the Kidd" (from the People Under the Stairs album Stepfather)
 * 2007: "Wolves" and "Tar Pit" (from the Wu-Tang Clan album 8 Diagrams)
 * 2007: "When the World Is at Peace" (Masters of Funk & Blues feat. George Clinton & Bobby Taylor; A Soulful Tale of Two Cities)
 * 2007: "Love Won't Let Me Wait" (Masters of Funk, Soul & Blues featuring George Clinton; A Soulful Tale of Two Cities)
 * 2007: "Night Out" (from the Lifesavas album Gutterfly)
 * 2008: "Up Again" (from the Bobby Digital album Digi Snacks)
 * 2008: "Hitler's Brain" (from the Die Warzau album Vinyl88: Not the Best of Die Warzau)
 * 2009: "There's a Party" (from the N.A.S.A album The Spirit of Apollo)
 * 2010: "Fo Yo Sorrows" (from the Big Boi album Sir Luscious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty)
 * 2010: "Red Wine" & "Red Wine (Skit)" (from the Stevie Stone album New Kid Comin)
 * 2011: "D-Funk (Funk With Us)" (from the Headhunters album Platinum)
 * 2012: Thanksgiving Day halftime show at Ford Field, Detroit, Michigan; Halftime Concert featuring Kid Rock)
 * 2013: "Tonight We Ride" (from the Killah Priest album The Psychic World of Walter Reed)
 * 2013: "Do the Damn Thang" (from the Ralph Myerz album Supersonic Pulse)
 * 2014: "UFO Le Funk" & "Brooklyn UFO" from the Funky Taurus & George Clinton album UFO Le Funk)
 * 2015: "Wesley's Theory" (from the Kendrick Lamar album To Pimp a Butterfly)
 * 2015: "The Lavishments of Light Looking" (from the Adult Swim Singles Program 2015 by WOKE)
 * 2016: "Do the Damn Thang" (Da YoungFellaz single featuring Snoop Dogg & Nipsey Hussle)
 * 2016: "Cool Joe" (new version by George Clinton & Funky Taurus)
 * 2016: "Riot" (from the Childish Gambino album "Awaken, My Love!")
 * 2018: "Hawking Tribute" (George Clinton & Funky Taurus; pays tribute to the passing of Stephen Hawking)
 * 2019: "Lazy Daisy" (George Clinton & Funky Taurus; from the Lazy Daisy album Lazy Daisy George Clinton & Funky Taurus)
 * 2019: "Burning Down the House" (from the Flying Lotus album Flamagra)
 * 2019: "Feed the Wolf" (Miss Velvet and the Blue Wolf feat. George Clinton; guesting on 4 tracks)
 * 2021: "Groove for the Ques" (Willie Bradley & George Clinton)
 * 2021: "Funk Aspirin" (Cimafunk & George Clinton)
 * 2022: "Benny's Got a Gun" (BLK ODYSSY & Benny the Butcher & George Clinton)
 * 2022: "She's a Flirt" (Incidents & West Coast Stone & George Clinton)
 * 2023: "Up is Just A Place" (Smudge All Stars feat. George Clinton) (From the 2020 album Smudge All Stars)
 * 2023: "Headache" (Smudge All Stars feat. George Clinton) (From the 2020 album Smudge All Stars)
 * 2023: "All the Parties" (Drake feat. Chief Keef and George Clinton; uncredited) (From the 2023 album For All the Dogs)

Filmography

 * Saturday Night Live (1986)
 * The Night Before (1988)
 * House Party (1990)
 * Graffiti Bridge (1990)
 * Good Burger (1997)
 * Space Ghost Coast to Coast (1997)
 * Martin (1997)
 * Butter (1998)
 * The Bernie Mac Show (2004)
 * How I Met Your Mother (2006)
 * Freaknik: The Musical (2010)
 * The Cleveland Show (2013)
 * Loiter Squad (2013)
 * Trolls World Tour (2020)
 * The Masked Singer U.S. (2022)
 * Agent Elvis (2023)
 * Good Burger 2 (2023)

title: George Clinton (funk musician)


text:
Talk:Aberrant

author's note: I really hope that Aberrant doesn't get cancelled. Not only is the system easy, but the setting allows for a much more in-depth game than many 4 color supers games.

I don't know when the author wrote that, but Aberrant has been canceled for a while now. Urbandale (talk) 09:44, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

title: Talk:Aberrant


text:
Population of Canada by province and territory

Canada is divided into 10 provinces and three territories. The majority of Canada's population is concentrated in the areas close to the Canada–US border. Its four largest provinces by area (Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, and Alberta) are also its most populous; together they account for 86.5 percent of the country's population. The territories (the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon) account for over a third of Canada's area but are home to only 0.32 percent of its population, which skews the national population density value.

Canada's population grew by 5.24 percent between the 2016 and 2021 censuses. With the exceptions of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Northwest Territories, all territories and provinces increased in population from 2016 to 2021. In terms of percent change, the fastest-growing province or territory was Yukon with an increase of 12.1 percent between 2016 and 2021, followed by Prince Edward Island with 7.99 percent growth.

Generally, provinces steadily grew in population along with Canada. However, some provinces such as Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador experienced long periods of stagnation or population decline. Ontario and Quebec were always the two most populous provinces in Canada, with over 60 percent of the population at any given time. The demographic importance of the West steadily grew over time, while the importance of Atlantic Canada steadily slipped. Canada's population has increased every year since Confederation in 1867: see List of population of Canada by year.

Population growth rate
Current provinces and territories population growth rate are based on the Statistics Canada 2021 Census of Population.

Historical population

The population of Canada increased every year since Confederation in 1867. The first national census of the country was taken in 1871, and it covered the four provinces which were part of Canada at the time. It recorded a population of 1,620,851 in Ontario, 1,191,516 in Quebec, 387,800 in Nova Scotia and 285,594 in New Brunswick The population of each of these provinces continued to grow every year uninterrupted. However, their growth was slow in the late 19th century because there were few economic opportunities. As a result, many Canadians opted to emigrate in the United States for work.

This phenomenon hit Quebec especially hard. Approximately 900,000 Quebec residents (French Canadian for the great majority) left for the United States between 1840 and 1930. However, Quebec's population losses to emigration during this period were largely offset by its natural population growth. Indeed, until the middle of the 20th century, Quebec had a birth rate considerably higher than most of its contemporary industrialized societies. This period of high French-Canadian population growth is nicknamed La Revanche des berceaux (lit: 'the revenge of the cradle'). Population growth in the Northwest Territories, and then the Western provinces, picked up when the Canadian government passed the Dominion Lands Act in 1872 to encourage the settlement of the Canadian Prairies, and to help prevent the area from being claimed by the United States. The act gave a claimant 160 acre for free, the only cost to the farmer being a $10 administration fee. Any male farmer who was at least 21 years of age and agreed to cultivate at least 40 acre of the land and build a permanent dwelling on it (within three years) qualified. The population of the Canadian prairies grew rapidly in the last decade of the 19th century, and the population of Saskatchewan quintupled from 91,000 in 1901 to 492,000 in 1911. The vast majority of these people were immigrants from Europe.

Early counts of Northwest Territories' population tend to exclude the Indigenous citizens of the nations whose countries comprised the territory, such as the Dene of Denendeh or Inuit of Inuit Nunangat. The territory's population drops at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries are due to its reduction in size, as Yukon, then Saskatchewan and Alberta were carved out of its territory, and the same with Nunavut a century later. Yukon's population spike at the turn of the 20th century is due to the Klondike Gold Rush, when an estimated 100,000 people tried to reach the Klondike goldfields between 1896 and 1899, of whom only around 30,000 to 40,000 eventually did.

Generally, provinces steadily grew in population along with Canada. However, some provinces experienced long periods of stagnation or population decline. After peaking in 1891, Prince Edward Island's population started to decline every year until 1941, after which the province started growing again. In Saskatchewan, after a rapid population explosion at the beginning of the century that propelled the province to being the 3rd largest in the country, its population declined during the Great Depression, and its growth had been slow ever since. From 1931 to 2016, Saskatchewan's population increased by only 19.2 percent, well below the national average. Newfoundland and Labrador, on the other hand, experienced slow but continuous growth until the 1990s, when the cod fisheries collapsed, and their population started to fall.

After the collapse of the Canadian birth rate, most provinces now sustain their population with immigration from the developing world. The number of new immigrants increases every year. {| class="wikitable" Historical population growth by province/territory ! Ontario ! Quebec ! Nova Scotia ! New Brunswick ! Manitoba ! British Columbia ! Prince Edward Island ! Saskatchewan

! Alberta ! Newfoundland & Labrador ! Northwest Territories ! Yukon ! Nunavut ! colspan="3" rowspan="2" |
 * }
 * }
 * }
 * }

Demographic weight of provinces and territories
The demographic weight of each province in Canada has always constituted a sensitive issue. In 1840, the Durham Report recommended that Upper Canada (now Ontario) and Lower Canada (now Quebec) be united into one province. The newly created Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada was required to have equal representation from Canada East (now Quebec) and Canada West (now Ontario), even though the population of Canada East was considerably larger. In 1840, the population of Canada East was estimated at 670,000, while the population of Canada West was estimated to be 480,000. Lord Durham had not recommended this approach and had instead proposed that the representation should be based on the respective populations of the two regions. The British government rejected that recommendation and instead implemented sectional equality, apparently to give the English-speaking population of the new province a dominant voice in the provincial government.

However, the 1851 census revealed that Canada West's population had surpassed Canada East's. This fact fuelled demands in Canada West for the end of sectional equality and the move toward allocating seats in the legislation on the basis of population, nicknamed "rep by pop". This was a hotly contested issue at the constitutional conferences leading up to confederation, and the colonies reached a comprise in which the seats in the federal lower house (House of Commons) would be allocated by population, and the seats in the federal upper house (Senate) would be allocated on the basis of three defined regions – Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes – that would each have 24 seats.

Since Confederation, Ontario and Quebec have always been Canada's two most populous provinces. However, their combined demographic weight decreased from over 80 percent at Confederation to just over 60 percent in 2016. The Atlantic provinces also lost importance within Canada, from around 20 percent at Confederation to under 7 percent today. The West's importance, however, has only increased, from insignificant levels in 1871 to over 30 percent of the country in 2016. In the first half of the 20th century, the most populous western province was Saskatchewan, but its population was later eclipsed by British Columbia, Alberta, and Manitoba.

The issue of the demographic weight of each province came up during the negotiations for the patriation of the Canadian Constitution, and especially discussions around the amending formula of the constitution. The final formula stipulates that minor changes to the constitution had to be approved by the Parliament of Canada and the Legislature of 6 provinces representing at least 50 percent of the Canadian population. This essentially meant that either Ontario or Quebec had to agree to any constitutional amendments that affect all provinces.

Quebec had managed to maintain a stable demographic weight within Canada during the first half of the 20th century due to its high birth rate. However, their importance began to slip as their birth rate started to fall in the 1960s. Quebec wanted to make it up through immigration, and for this purpose created its Ministry of Immigration in 1968, and negotiated for increased powers in this field with the federal government. However, new immigrants to Canada disproportionally go the Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta, fuelling their rise in demographic weight. In response, a Canada–Québec Accord was concluded in 1991 which, among other things, guaranteed Quebec an immigration rate proportional to its demographic weight in Canada. This provision was not fulfilled, as in 2005, immigration to Quebec represented only 16.5 percent of all immigration to Canada.

Quebec also attempted to maintain its weight within the Canadian House of Commons during the constitutional negotiations of the early 1990s. Under the Charlottetown Accord, in exchange for Quebec losing Senate seats under a Triple-E Senate (dropping from 24 to 6), Quebec was guaranteed never to be allotted less than 25 percent of the seats in the House of Commons. The accord was ultimately defeated in a public referendum.

 * Historical demographic weight of provinces and territories