Just a brief post. Most in Western Society have reverted to a kind of hunting-gathering lifestyle that includes extensive trade (through merchants) with food producers.

This morning I read the following (please excuse the probable typos - I'm in a hurry):

"In short, the variable outcomes of the Austronesian expansion strikingly illustrate the role of food production in human population movements. Austronesian food-producers migrated into two regions (New Guinea and Indonesia) occupied by resident peoples who were probably related to each other. The esidents of Indonesia were still hunter-gatherers, while the residents of New Guinea were ALREADY FOOD PRODUCERS and had developed MANY OF THE CONCOMITANTS OF FOOD PRODUCTION (DENSE POPULATIONS, DISEASE RESISTANCE, MORE ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY, and so on). AS A RESULT, while the Austronesian expansion swept away the original Indonesians, IT FAILED TO MAKE MUCH HEADWAY IN THE NEW GUINEA REGION, just as it also failed to make headway against Austroasiatic and Tai-Kadai food producers in tropical Southeast Asia...

To anyone interested in world history, human societies of Eas Asia and the Pacific are instructive, because they provide so many examples of how environment molds history...Again and again, people with access to the prerequisites for food production, and with a location favoring diffusion of technology from elsewhere, REPLACED peoples lacking these advantages. Again and again when a single wave of colonists spread out over diverse environments, their descendants developed in separate ways, depending on those environmental differences...

Within a millenium, East Polynesian colonists had reverted to hunting-gathering on the Chathams while buiding a protostate with intensive food production on Hawaii.

When Europeans at last arrived, their technological and other advantages enabled them to establish temporary colonial domination over most of tropical Southeast Asia and the Pacific islands. However, INDIGENOUS GERMS AND FOOD PRODUCERS PREVENTED EUROPEANS FROM SETTLING MOST OF THIS REGION IN SIGNIFICANT NUMBERS...only New Zealand, New Caledonia, and Hawaii...in the most nearly temperate (Europe-like) climates-now support large European populations. Thus, unlike Australia and the Americas, East Asia and most Pacific islands remain occupied by East Asian and Pacific peoples."

Diamond, Jarrod. Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W.Norton & Company, Inc., 1999.