Best-selling author Jared Diamond argues in his latest book, The World Until Yesterday, that there are profound differences between so-called “traditional” societies and industrial or post-industrial societies in everything from the way we count to the way we meet strangers.

Today’s traditional societies represent a window onto the human world as it was until a mere yesterday, measured against a time scale of 6,000,000 years of human evolution. Traditional lifestyles are what shaped us and caused us to be what we are now; what can we learn from them as we negotiate the new challenges of the modern world?

There’s been a reaction to Diamond’s ideas from Survival International: Angry Papuan leaders demand Jared Diamond apologizes