Whites arrived, imposed centralized government and brought material goods whose value New Guineans instantly recognized, ranging from steel axes, matches and medicines to clothing, soft drinks and umbrellas. Yet Yali had quizzed lots of whites as he was then quizzing me, and I had quizzed lots of New Guineans. He and I both knew perfectly well that New Guineans are on the average at least as smart as Europeans. It was a simple question that went to the heart of life as Yali experienced it. Yes, there still is a huge difference between the lifestyle of the average New Guinean and that of the average European or American.
Comparable differences separate the lifestyles of other peoples of the world as well.
Those huge disparities must have potent causes that one might think would be obvious. Yet this simple question is a difficult one to answer. We all know that history has proceeded very differently for peoples from different parts of the globe. In the 13,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age, some parts of the world developed literate industrial societies with metal tools, other parts developed only nonliterate farming societies, and still others retained societies of hunter-gatherers with stone tools. Those historical inequalities, which constitute the most basic fact of world history, have cast long shadows on the modern world because the literate societies with metal tools have conquered or exterminated the other societies.