The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?

Overview
Jared Diamond draws on decades of fieldwork and cross-cultural comparison to contrast the lives of traditional societies in places such as New Guinea, the Amazon, and parts of Africa with those of modern industrialized nations. He treats "traditional" as a broad category that includes hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, and subsistence farmers, and he frames differences in behavior and institutions as adaptations to differing ecological and demographic circumstances. The central aim is pragmatic: to identify practices that might improve contemporary well-being and to warn against nostalgically romanticizing the past.

Sources and method
The narrative weaves personal observations with ethnographic literature and historical data, using village examples Diamond has known personally alongside broader surveys. He uses comparative examples to reveal patterns, how small-scale societies handle conflict, sickness, child care, and aging, and then contrasts those patterns with typical Western responses. The method emphasizes natural experiments: societies that have persisted with older lifestyles provide insight into human behavior in the absence of industrial structures.

Childrearing, family life, and socialization
One sustained focus is parenting and early childhood. Diamond highlights how many traditional societies practice close physical contact, shared caregiving, and early autonomy for children, which promote rapid motor development and social integration. He argues that Western emphasis on isolation, formal schedules, and institutional childcare carries trade-offs, especially in social bonding and mental health. At the same time, he notes that traditional practices sometimes tolerate harsh discipline or high child mortality, so beneficial elements must be identified selectively rather than adopted wholesale.

Health, diet, and longevity
Traditional diets and active lifestyles often reduce the prevalence of chronic diseases common in the West, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, and certain cardiovascular conditions. However, infectious disease, acute injuries, and high childhood mortality remain serious problems where modern medical care is absent. Diamond discusses how immunological exposure, antibiotic availability, and sanitation create starkly different health landscapes, and he stresses that some modern interventions, vaccination, antibiotics, clean water, are nonnegotiable improvements even as Western lifestyle elements sometimes worsen long-term health.

Conflict, religion, and social regulation
Variation in violence and conflict resolution features prominently. Some small-scale societies maintain low levels of lethal violence through kin-based mediation, social ostracism, and strong reputational incentives, while others experience intergroup raiding and high mortality from warfare. Religious and ritual systems often serve social regulatory functions, binding groups and legitimizing norms. Diamond emphasizes that modern legal systems replace many traditional mechanisms but that communal accountability and restorative practices offer useful complements to state-based justice.

Lessons, trade-offs, and implications
The central takeaway is pragmatic selectivity: modern societies can beneficially revive or adapt certain traditional practices, greater community care for children and elders, more physical activity, dietary shifts, without discarding crucial medical and institutional advances. Diamond repeatedly warns against idealizing traditional life; its benefits coexist with serious drawbacks, and cultural context matters. He urges policymakers and individuals to weigh trade-offs consciously, learning from traditional societies where they offer superior solutions while retaining the lifesaving gains of modernization.

Conclusion
The comparative lens reframes modern problems as choices among adaptive strategies rather than inevitable outcomes. By cataloguing both strengths and weaknesses of traditional ways of living, Diamond encourages a thoughtful synthesis: take what improves health, social cohesion, and resilience, and leave behind what increases suffering. The result is a practical guide to thinking about cultural practices as toolbox items for improving human well-being across vastly different environments.