Tüfek, Mikrop ve Çelik, herkesin okuması gereken kitapların başında yer alan bir kitap. Son zamanlarda çok popüler olan sapiens gibi taraflı ve eksik bilgiler yer almıyor. Vermek istediğini kitabın adında da söyleyen, net bir kitap. Kitabın, kafanızda oluşmuş, unutulmuş bir çok soruya cevap verdiğini söylemeliyim. Özellikle benim için bir kaç önemli soruyu yanıtladı ve nedenlerini açıkladı.
Okuması çok kolay bir kitap ama çok fazla konuya değindiğinden biraz geniş bir zamana yaymanız iyi olabilir. Bir ayı geçen bir sürede tamamladım ve arada bir çok kitap okudum. Bu şekilde ilerlenince kitaba daha iyi doymuş oluyorsunuz.
Sadece antropoloji ile ilgilenenlerin değil, neyin nasıl olduğunu ve neden böyle geliştiğini soran ve sorgulayan bu eşsiz kitabı tavsiye ederim.

Авторът си поставя за цел да отговори на въпроса защо някои държави и народи се развиват бързо, а други - бавно. Защо европейците покоряват света, а не примерно австралийските аборигени. Отговорът му е накратко - географска предопределеност.

На някои места на планетата има подходящи условия за човешко и цивилизационно развитие, а на други няма - плавателни реки, подходящи за опитомяване животни и растения и т.н. За да достигне до този извод, той напълва по-голямата част от книгата с описание на човешкото развитие в различните периоди на различните континенти, като твърди постоянно, че именно специфичните условия на специфичните места не само позволяват, но и са необходимо, достатъчно и изключително условие за това развитие.

Лично според мен аргументите му за това са твърде слаби. На нито едно място той не успява (не се и опитва) да покаже защо именно тия условия са изключително необходими за развитието. Никъде не адресира въпроса защо на други места със същите условия не се наблюдава подобно развитие. Даже не се доближава до задаване на един от основните въпроси, които се налагат при разглеждане на материята - защо някои народи са проспериращи и успешни в каквито и условия на света да попаднат като емигранти, а други се осират даже в най-подкрепящите ги страни.

Всъщност, "Пушки, вируси и стомана" e всепризнато ненавиждана от историците заради нейните безбройни неточности и невярности. Толкова, че дори има публикувана научна статия със заглавие F**k Jared Diamond. Толкова, че в елитния събредит AskHistorians има цял раздел колко Джаред Даймънд греши във всичко. Толкова, че в събредит История има бот, който дава автоматичен отговор всеки път когато някой спомене книгата или автора.

Точно както всички книги за които се вдига голям хайп, и тази не отговаря на високите очаквания. Разбира се, това не е неочаквано - книги, които са много четени и се харесват на голям кръг хора няма как да са особено дълбоки. Бих си позволил да кажа, че авторът е нещо като еквивалента на Паоло Коелю в антропологията. Манекенските умове са запленени от него. Ако искате отговори на въпросите, които книгата поставя, много по-интересно, интелигентно и пълно ще ги получите от Civilisation: the West and the Rest.

واقعا به معنای واقعی کلمه، پدرم دراومد تا بتونم این کتاب رو تمام کنم! حقیقتا تا این حد سخت خوان و با ترجمه‌ی غیرروان بود

کتاب خیلی در جهان تقدیر شده ولی واقعا من نتونستم ازش لذت ببرم و به نظرم چیزی فراتر از داده‌های ما هم ارائه نمی‌کرد. یه جورایی علمی شده‌ی همان انسان خردمند بود

Misleading! The actual title should be Germs, More Germs and a bit about Steel And Guns, but not very much on those last two really...I mean, we want to put Guns first because it's more attention-grabbing than Germs, but let's face it, this book is mostly about Germs.

Why has no publishing house knocked down my door trying to obtain my book titling services yet?!

Jared Diamond dives into a multi-disciplinary inquiry with this book. Among the intriguing questions he raises is: “Why weren't Native Americans, Africans, and Aboriginal Australians the ones who decimated, subjugated, or exterminated Europeans and Asians?” (Location 207) Of course there was the technology gap. But again, why? He starts with the end of the Ice Age around 11,000 BC when all humans were hunter-gatherers. “Why did human development proceed at
such different rates on different continents?” (Location 228)

As a geographer he notes that the “axis” of the American continents runs North-South. Migrants crossed significantly contrasting climates and ecosystems as they moved between latitudes. Eurasia's “axis” is roughly East-West. The comparative similarity of Eurasia's climate along this belt promoted more rapid spread of populations, agriculture, and technological invention. He notes that agriculture appears to have diffused outward from southwest Asia (the fertile crescent). In the Americas, agriculture appears to have risen independently in Mesoamerica and in South America.

For Diamond, agriculture was an integral part of what he calls an autocatalytic loop that included food storage, population density, domestication of mammals for transport and labor, specialization of labor, technological development and heirarchical political organization.

Localized plant species and an absence of large mammals further impeded development in the Americas and Africa. (He excludes elephants a priori. “[A] domesticated animal is defined as an animal selectively bred in captivity and thereby modified from its wild ancestors, for use by humans who control the animal's breeding and food supply).” (Location 2713) In the Americas he notes the absence of what he calls foundation species. Horses? Extinct. Bison? An interesting fact: “In the 19th and 20th centuries at least six large mammals – the eland, elk, moose, musk ox, zebra and American bison – have been the subject of especially well-organized projects aimed at domestication, carried out by modern scientific animal breeders and geneticists....Yet these modern efforts have achieved only very limited successes.” (Location 2899) A major hurdle to be blunt was “Nasty Disposition.” (Location 2945) In this category, the award apparently goes to the zebra.

He hypothecizes that domesticated animals harbored precursors to diseases that killed human populations but also promoted immunization. If correct this answers another question: “Why didn't Native American diseases instead decimate the Spanish invaders, spread back to Europe, and wipe out 95 percent of Europe's population?” (Location 3352)

Diamond revives the 19th century tradition of macrohistory in this quest for patterns and chains of cause and effect. The book is ambitious, but also grueling. My personal preference is for the microhistorical approach popularized by Mark Kurland, James Burke and Simon Winchester: choose a single object or event and draw a radiating web of connections. Nevertheless, this book was certainly thought-provoking. As new findings accumulate, it provides a useful organizational structure for future theorizing.

On the Onerousness of Zebra Domestication and Other Such Digressions on the Nature of Wildly Divergent Cultural Outcomes Contingent on Flora and Fauna Nurtured by Disparate Geographical Conditions - Exordium.

I, Zoologist supreme, heave into view of my motley assemblage of eager young minds. Hands clasped behind my back, the profile of my chin angled just so as I strafe back and forth before the striated equine beast. A creature whose eyes, even now, intimate a kind of crazed potential energy sufficient to launch a pound of bacon into the asteroid belt or turn the pelvic bones of zoo keepers into kinetic blossoms of calcified shrapnel with nasty kick that’s been honed over evolutionary time to deliver maximum deterrence to predator’s foolish enough to linger in the crosshairs of its muscled booty.

“Children, here is a bit of interesting zoological trivia.” (Antagonizing the animal by stomping my feet and gesticulating wildly in its general direction with a stick.) “The Zebra, depicted in most media as a tranquil herbivore of little combat acumen is...” (Wrestling to pry the stick away from its violent gnashing) “Is, in fact, a killing machine.” (Disgorging mauled walking prosthesis, smoothing hair and readjusting safari hat.) And is one of the most dangerous animals we hold captive in these environs. Tim, if you will...” (Tim, nervous like a dog shitting peach seeds, approaches the rear of the Zebra, his butt cheeks compressing an invisible diamond.) “Witness the Hipotigris of the Plains, unassuming, a sedge eating pacifist, taken from the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania. Get a look at that coat. Hypnotic, isn’t it? Theories abound about the functional utility of these stripes, from thermoregulation to camou..”.” (Tim absorbs vicious hoofing to abdominal wall, propelled backwards several feet and losing approximately one shoe, one safari hat, and half his daily calories to the kleptomania of sudden violence and subsequent bodily propulsion.) “That’s good, Tim.” (Nodding towards Tim as he seeds the air with dust clouds of painful commotion.)

Tim’s dolorous guttural melody proves disconcerting enough that he must be removed via gurney, followed by the administration of milk and cookies to the weeping elementary students.

“The lesson is; Do Not Be Fooled. It is a fact that if I maneuver into range of its bite, like so...” (Advancing towards the muzzle of Zebra with perfect nonchalance) “It will unsheathe its enameled arsenal, and, like an enormous Pitt bull of Rorshached hide, will seize my carotid and not relinquish its hold until - one - of - us - is - dead.” (Creature inserts clavicle into mouth and chews powerfully.) “LET this... (Hissing of air between teeth) “... the following epexegetic tumult, or codicil, HAHA GALLOWS HUMOR, you see, serve as...” (HNNNNNNNNG) “...an extramural history lecture of sorts.” (Wipes froth of drool from shoulder, repositions hat.) “PISS CHRIST IN THE LOUVRE, I AM IN DREADFUL PAIN, CHILDREN!” (Struggling to maintain posture, vacillations between consciousness and shock induced repose intensify). “Imagine, for a moment, the critical role that animals have played in the flourishing of certain cultures. The economic impact. The ability to develop means of subsistence which push local populations past the threshold for cities, with their attendant complex forms of commerce and divisions of labor, to form. Which allows for the saturation of ingenuity and accrual of capital necessary for big industrial projects, for IAGO! IAGO! YOU TRAITOR! MY BONES ARE BEING PULVERIZED BY A FREUDIAN DENTATA OF DENTURES! (Now struggling against Zebra’s rapacious death grip, swatting with hat.) How this was the necessary precondition for the spread of virulent pathogens and immunities conferred. Now suppose that instead of horses, one had only these... Only these... (Into this wild Abyss/ The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave--/ Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,/ But all these in their pregnant causes mixed/ Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,/ Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain/ His dark materials to create more worlds,--/ Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend/ Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,/ Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith/ He had to cross.)

Would they have the requisite technology to produce guns? Durable alloys for blade and armor? Large disciplined armies? Would they, unbeknownst to them, engage in biological warfare by trialing a miasma of humanity’s most dire diseases? Children! Would they...” (reaching forth with bloody arm and intoning as if possessed demonically) “Would they be here tomorrow, to greet me yesterday?” (Losing consciousness and collapsing.)

Scene transitions to heavily bandaged patient with gnawed safari hat sitting slightly off kilter, lowering a book and acknowledging the camera with a grimace of pain.

“A fascinating exploration of disparate cultural outcomes proceeding from the assumption that the primary differences, rather than being innate to their respective peoples, were the products of geographical confluences which left the distribution of plants and animals amenable to the process of domestication fundamentally uneven.”

Geographic determinism

Been waiting a long time to get to this book. Diamond attempts to answer the pertinent question: why did western European countries come to dominate the modern world? This book is the answer to the racist assertion of racial and biological determinism, that white European countries were inherently more clever to devise methods to take over other countries. The answer that Diamond is simple: white European countries fell ass-backwards into bounteous lands full of large livestock that hadn't been killed off and was actually amenable to domestication. The seasons of land masses were more easily cultivated to create durable crops. When people can farm, they increase population density and can create division of labor beyond hunter/gatherer. This lends to advanced warfare and other social pressures that may spurn innovation.

With higher population density comes the phenomenon of people living in their own sewage and with their animals resulting in something that hunter gatherer societies lack: exposure and immunity to pathogens. Thus western societies were a neat package of unwitting biological and social welfare that easily conquered the rest of the world by virtue of happenstance of where they developed.

It's a fascinating theory that many may also find problematic. Diamond explores a lot here in a very scholarly way with mountains of anthropological evidence. This is a long but engaging read. I'd highly recommend.

GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL: THE FATES OF HUMAN SOCIETIES BY JARED DIAMOND: This is one of those books that takes you a while to read -- it's pretty heavy non-fiction -- and yet at the end of it, you feel like Hippocrates, a Muslim scientist, or Leonardo Da Vinci must have felt at the realization of a great discovery. The Eureka! moment. This book is kind of like the movie Hotel Rwanda: the movie was life-altering for me, and just made every other movie that came out that year seem tawdry and unimportant; it was one of those movies that everyone should see (especially Americans and Western Europeans) just to understand the world and its history better. Guns, Germs, and Steel is one of those books that everyone should read to better comprehend their existence at this specific moment in time.

The premise of the book is revealed in the prologue in a conversation between the author and a New Guinea native who lives his very simple life in Stone Age conditions. The thesis that arises in their conversation is what specific events led to the fact that Europeans were the ones to reach New Guinea and interact with its people, and why it wasn't the New Guinea people to develop the technology and abilities to travel the world and make first contact with the Europeans.

With the concept in place, Diamond sets about doing this in his conversational and, quite frankly, mind-blowing and ingenious way. As a professor, with studies in anthropology and biology, he has an astounding way of seeing things and being able to explain ideas in a simple manner that make so much sense and you're left saying to yourself: "Oh, that's how that happened," or "that's why it's like that." At times he can bog you down with details, mainly because he explains them on minutest and seemingly most insignificant level (such as different seeds around the world). And yet you are left with that adage of chaos theory: everything on this planet happens for a reason and has a knock-on effect.

Some of Diamond's ideas that I found and still find most astonishing include:

The reason the continent of Eurasia was able to develop to a much more advanced level than the rest of the world, with its complex empires, cradles of civilizations, and large amount of farming and domesticated species was due to its latitude on a specific east-west axis. The other continents -- North and South America, Africa, Australasia -- are all on a north-south axis. What does this difference mean? For one, climate is greatly changed the further north or south ones goes, which has an effect on the migration of people, animals, and plants, as well as the spread of information, technology and culture. Because of this, Eurasia was able to develop more crops and have them spread around the continent through trade, as well as the spread of domesticated animals, culture and more importantly, technology. The other continents did not have this ease, which Diamond explains in clear detail with facts and dates.

Of course, I am vastly over-simplifying the book and it's really necessary for one to peruse its pages to get the full understanding. Another concept that I was very happy to be made so clear is the explanation of why whites conquered most of the world was not because they were a superior race in any way. And how is this simply explained? To use Jared Diamond's example:

If you liked this review, and would like to read more, go to BookBanter.

What a terrific book.

Timely excerpt from the book....

Evolution of epidemic infectious diseases

The main killers of humans since the advent of agriculture have been acute, highly infectious, epidemic diseases that are confined to humans and that either kill the victim quickly or, if the victim recovers, immunize him/her for life. Such diseases could not have existed before the origins of agriculture, because they can sustain themselves only in large dense populations that did not exist before agriculture, hence they are often termed ‘crowd diseases’.

The mystery of the origins of many of these diseases has been solved by molecular biological studies of recent decades, demonstrating that they evolved from similar epidemic diseases of our herd domestic animals with which we began to come into close contact 10,000 years ago. Thus, the evolution of these diseases depended on two separate roles of domestication: in creating much denser human populations, and in permitting much more frequent transmission of animal diseases from our domesticates than from hunted wild animals. For instance, measles and tuberculosis arose from diseases of cattle, influenza from a disease of pigs and ducks. An outstanding mystery remains the origins of smallpox: did it reach us from camels or from cattle?

===============

On a different note, forensic anthropologists made some stunning discoveries on the outskirts of Lima, Peru, that essentially challenge Diamond's hypothesis about the conquest of the Incas. This documentary explains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JZKU...

[Original review, Dec 10 2008]

I liked this book, and it taught me a bunch of things I hadn't known before I read it. Jared Diamond has clearly had a more interesting life than most of us, and spent significant amounts of time in a wide variety of different kinds of society, all over the world. He says he got the basic idea from a conversation he had back in the 70s with a friend in New Guinea. His friend, who later became a leader in the independence movement, wanted to talk about "cargo" (manufactured goods, technology). "Why is it," he asked, "that you Europeans have so much more cargo than we do?" Diamond thought he had come up with a good question, and wrote the book in an attempt to answer it.

The core of Diamond's explanation is that Europeans were essentially lucky in two respects. First, we have unusually many easily domesticable plant and animal species. Second, since Europe is oriented East-West rather than North-South, a species which is domesticated in one part of Europe has a good chance of thriving in another, so there are many opportunities to swap farming technology between different areas. It helps that there is an easily navigable river system, and also that there are no impassible deserts or mountain ranges. These conditions are not reproduced in most other parts of the world; Diamond has a range of interesting tables, showing how few useful domesticable species there are elsewhere. Because we got efficient farming earlier than most other people, we also got cities and advanced technology earlier, and everything else followed from that initial lead we established.

One objection you could make is that it wasn't luck, but rather that Europeans were more enterprising than people in other areas about finding good species to domesticate. Diamond's answer to this is fairly convincing. Having lived extensively with pre-industrial people, he says that we city-dwellers just don't understand how well they know their flora and fauna, and how active their interest in them is. I guess a New Guinea tribesman would, conversely, be surprised at how quickly word gets around on the Internet when a cool new website appears. Basically, what he's saying is that pre-industrial people tried everything that could be tried, and when they didn't find anything good, it's because it wasn't there. Systematic studies by modern scientists do seem to support this conclusion.

Another criticism some readers have leveled at Diamond is that he makes history completely deterministic - once the geography was fixed, everything that happened after that was inevitable. I don't actually think that's fair. Diamond is open about the fact that his theories make one embarrassingly incorrect prediction: if it was all about being first to domesticate plant and animal species and set up efficient farming, then China should be the world's preeminent civilization. Even though he makes some attempt to explain why this isn't so, there does right now seem to be a fair case for saying that it's not only geography.

Luckily, George W. Bush has been working hard to try and smooth things out. If the Western world can just arrange two or three more leaders like him, all of Diamond's data will hopefully come out the way it's supposed to, and the last few hundred years of Western history can be written off as a statistical blip. Way to go, Dubya!
_________________________________
[Update, Oct 1 2012]

I was surprised this morning to discover that Darwin, in On the Origin of Species, expressed an opinion diametrically opposite to the one Diamond argues for:

If it has taken centuries or thousands of years to improve or modify most of our plants up to their present standard of usefulness to man, we can understand how it is that neither Australia, the Cape of Good Hope, nor any other region inhabited by quite uncivilised man, has afforded us a single plant worth culture. It is not that these countries, so rich in species, do not by a strange chance possess the aboriginal stocks of any useful plants, but that the native plants have not been improved by continued selection up to a standard of perfection comparable with that given to the plants in countries anciently civilised.

Does Diamond mention this? Unfortunately, I don't have a copy to hand.
_________________________________
[Update, Mar 20 2020]

We seem to be well on track. Deadly virus comes out of China, Western leaders react with a mixture of denial and incompetence as infection rates soar and their economies crumble. Diamond's analysis was so accurate that he couldn't believe his own conclusions.
_________________________________
[Update, Sep 22 2021]

And following on from that, anyone who's read this book will think of an argument in favor of the antivax movement that I'm surprised not to have seen more antivaxers pushing. Diamond tells us that the Europeans conquered the world largely due to the fact that they had bigger cities, which could breed deadlier germs. Everywhere the Europeans went, their germs went with them and killed less disease-resistent indigenous populations. But now the largest cities are no longer in Europe, and the West is on the receiving end of natural bacteriological warfare. Even if vaccines offer a temporary respite, the best long-term strategy is to evolve as quickly as possible.

Of course, that does mean allowing a lot of people to die, but it'll be in a good cause. The antivaxers just need to explain the reasoning clearly.

Did you ever wonder if there is a certain inevitability in the way world civilization and history has evolved? Jared Diamond’s work Guns, Germs and Steel argues, in effect, that the giant Eurasian continent (Europe and Asia combined) was predestined to take over the world.



Everything conspired in favor of Eurasia: climate, vegetation, topography, travel routes, variety of wild animals available to be domesticated, population distribution, mineral resources and even bacteria.

Compare Eurasia and Australia, for example, and you find that when humans evolved to the point of beginning agriculture, Eurasia had dozens of varieties of natural grains that could feed humans and a dozen potential draft and food animals. Australia had only two puny proto-grains and no potential draft animals. Were they going to harness a kangaroo or a koala? No contest.

Eurasia developed settled agriculture, food surpluses, dense populations, cities and complex social organizations. Due to climate and landform zones, Eurasian civilizations were then able to share inventions and culture with each other by trade or conquest in a broad east-west zone. Complex civilizations that developed elsewhere, such as those of the Aztecs and Incas, remained relatively isolated and had steep mountains and other geographic barriers to trade and broad movement.

Even the types of germs conspired to 'favor' European and Asian expansion. The virulent types of bacteria that developed among dense human populations in interaction with animal populations, which the Eurasians developed some immunity to, wiped out low-density indigenous societies on other continents when Europeans explored and settled new lands. On the other hand, non-Eurasian germs brought back from Africa and the New World had relatively little impact in Eurasia.



Many professional geographers and other academicians don’t like Diamond’s synthesis because it smacks too much of environmental determinism: the old “Northern peoples like the Vikings were warlike and fiercely independent; tropical folks were lazy and needed a whip to get them moving," etc.

When what's done is done, a Monday morning quarterback can tell us exactly why it happened that way. But other scenarios were possible. If one pre-Columbus Chinese emperor had not decided that it was a waste of money to build huge sailing ships, China could have discovered California. (The book 1421 : The Year China Discovered the World by Gavin Menzies.) Then the 'USA' or whatever it would have been called, would have been settled from west to east. All of us in the US would be speaking Chinese. Our history would be the story of crossing the Rockies from west to east. Then Diamond could use these same explanations to demonstrate why it had to happen this way.

A lot of ideas similar to Diamond’s can be found in older works such as Ellsworth Huntington’s 1945 book Mainsprings of Civilization.

Even if you don’t agree with his conclusions, Diamond gives us a lot to think about in a fact-crammed, yet very readable book that won a Pulitzer Prize.

Images: Map from slideplayer.com
An ancient Sumerian image from Wikipedia

[Edited 7/29/23]