The World Until Yesterday

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

US first edition, hardback cover
Author	Jared Diamond
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	Traditional societies
Publisher	Viking Press
Publication date	31 December 2012
Media type	Print
Pages	499
ISBN
OCLC	793726658
Preceded by	Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? is a 2012 popular science book by Jared Diamond. It explores what people living in the Western world can learn from traditional societies, including differing approaches to conflict resolution, treatment of the elderly, childcare, the benefits of multilingualism and a lower salt intake.

The World Until Yesterday has had a mixed reception. Abby O'Reilly of The Independent called it "essential reading" that "cements [Diamond's] position as the most considered, courageous and sensitive teller of the human story writing today." In The New York Times, David Brooks' review was mostly positive; but he lamented the lack of individual indigenous voices in the book, calling it "curiously impersonal."

Anthropologists' reception of the book was less positive. Ethnobotanist Wade Davis said both the scope of the "lessons" drawn and the range of ethnographic evidence used to support them was limited, characterising it as "a book of great promise [that] reads as a compendium of the obvious, ethnology by anecdote." Indigenous leaders in West Papua and indigenous rights organisation Survival International objected to Diamond's characterisation of tribal societies as violent.