An intriguing book. Regardless of whether its arguments are right or wrong, the book provides profound knowledge of human history and civilizations. A vast amount of information is presented neatly, that helps a layman like me to follow and capture the data better. I, considering myself to have no interest in all kinds of history (consequence of Vietnam's education system, but not only the problem of Vietnam to be precise), astonishingly found the book absorbing and thought - provoking. In addition, the author offers encouragement to the people in their efforts to write a brighter history for their homelands, as he implies that all the people on this planet have equal potency to shape the future of their regions.

Nonetheless, the book mostly refers to the mainstream theories in human immigration and neglecting other hypothesis, which may mislead the reader into presuming that what mentioned is the only truth. Besides, it analyses human history based on geographical regions (Europe, Asia and North Africa to be Eurasia), failing to meet the reader's expectation in figuring out what made western countries dominate the world today (he did explain it at the end of the book, but it was not satisfying).

Anyway, I like the book and the author's writing style. Reading it when there was tension between China and Vietnam regarding the oil rig gambit. A thought struck me that human came a long way to reach this stage and here we are fighting and killing each other. Stop that nationalism. It's all bullshit.

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...

Un titolo veramente interessante, da cui ho imparato molto. Mi aspettavo un libro peso, invece è scorrevole e di facile comprendimento anche per chi, come me, non ha studiato la materia. Molto completo e con diversi spunti per lunghe (anzi lunghissime) riflessioni.
Il tutto parte da una semplice domanda che l'amico (della Nuova Guinea) dell'autore fa al momento dell'arrivo degli aiuti umanitari: "come mai voi bianchi avete tutto questo cargo (inteso come ben materiali) e lo portate qui in Nuova Guinea, mentre noi neri ne abbiamo così poco?"
Da questa domanda, segue una serie di capitoli che portano ad avallare la tesi dell'autore racchiusa in una semplice risposta: "le forti disparità tra le vicende dei continenti non sono dovute a innate differenze dei popoli che li abitano, ma alle loro differenze ambientali". Queste poche parole racchiudono una storia di 13000 anni, in cui clima, territorio, predisposizione all'insediamento, la presenza o meno di determinate specie vegetali o animali e altre, seppur minime, variabili ha fatto sì che il progresso abbia avuto ritmi così diversi nei vari continenti da portare ancora oggi una netta distinzione di stile di vita tra le popolazioni mondiali.

Having read Charles C. Mann's 1491 immediately before Guns, Germs, and Steel, I was all-too aware of the dated nature of many of Diamond's assumptions about the New World. (And therefore I would highly recommend 1491 to anyone interested in learning about the latest and greatest developments in knowledge concerning the early history of the Americas.) This seed of doubt concerning the accuracy of Diamond's assumptions about the Americas prevented me from fully appreciating what he had to say about the histories of the other continents, of which I am even less familiar.

True, the theories promoted in Diamond's book are not disrupted by the accuracy of details concerning the peoples and societies under discussion, but this raises another concern for me: the theories are so generalized, they don't suffer for the potential inaccuracy of described events. In other words, instead of starting with objective histories (and or/references to ongoing research into such histories), the book starts with a central premise and cites historical examples to support that theory.

The central theory may be summarized as follows:
* People with agriculture can produce food surpluses
* Food surpluses can support larger populations
* People located in geographical areas with animals to domesticate were able to use such animals for labor as well as meat
* Large populations with food surpluses can support artisans and bureaucrats
* Artisans and bureaucrats lead to more complex social structures and technical innovations (tools, weapons, metallurgy)
* Dense populations (especially those with domestic animals) contract and evolve immunities to germs and diseases
* Eurasian populations, due to favorable conditions for agriculture and their head-start on many other populations around the globe, acquired the "guns, germs, and steel" to conquer populations lacking the equivalent weaponry, diseases, and technology.

While the central premise makes general sense, I think it's important to acknowledge that it represents a generality, and thus offers an over-simplified view of human history. Considering the fact that this book leans so heavily on theory, I am surprised that book stores typically shelve it in History and Science sections, rather than Philosophy.

After that long disclaimer, I can say that the overall content was interesting. I especially enjoyed the section about the process of domesticating plants and animals. It had never really occurred to me that some plants and animals simply cannot be domesticated, or that the yields of some plants made the domestication of others less desirable or completely unnecessary.

I will say this: he makes some interesting points about geographical and geological determinism and the potential validity thereof. Everything else, however, is basically shit. The Pulitzer this book got must have been the world's biggest and most expensive A for effort.

Diamond writes in his introduction that a multi-discipline effort "would be doomed from the outset, because the essence of the problem is to develop a unified synthesis. That consideration dictates single authorship, despite all the difficulties it poses." He does go on to mention "guidance from many colleagues," but even so this makes no goddamn sense (p. 26). It is actually possible to find people across disciplines who agree on a single theory - like, say, gravity. I'm using theory in the scientific sense here, where the fact of gravity's existence is obvious but there needs to be a framework of mechanical explanation - and this framework has the potential to be proven wrong. That doesn't change the fact of gravity's existence, it just means that one person's (or several people's) proposed explanation of its mechanics was misconceived. You can see similar approaches in the field of history. What this boils down to is, Diamond is saying right in the bloody introduction to the whole book that he was the only one who could do this glorious project and he didn't want to bring other people in because they might not agree with every single thing he's saying. GOD FORBID.

This book would have benefited from multiple authorship, particularly a partnership with someone who had some actual experience with historical research and thinking, because the incessant lazy errors are impressively offensive - Diamond keeps predicating his argument on such and such historical facts, but the facts he's using are flawed and wrong. Take his chapter on the Spanish invasion of the Americas. First off, he calls the indigenous naive like the extinct megafauna of the previous chapter - I'm not kidding, he uses that exact word and that exact comparison to animals; for somebody who's so avowedly anti-racist that's a fucking awful rhetorical tactic - but the academic offense is that his primary sources for the capture of Inca leader Atahuallapa are, as far as I can tell, Spanish letters to the king and Spanish personal journals. That's it. (Nothing is properly cited in this book, which is another cringe point.) Even a high school student could tell you that you should use and cite primary sources from multiple sides of an event, cite your secondary sources, and use some goddamn critical thinking. If you look at the Inca sources, sure there's some conflicting accounts - same goes for the Spanish - but what's obvious is that they weren't naive. Diamond asserts that Atahuallpa had bad information and it was an obvious trap supported by the advantages of Spanish literacy, but if you look at all the sources the situation is more that he had the right information but chose to be diplomatic in the Incan tradition. Pizarro was just a dick. (Diamond is right about the significance of germs, but that part's a gimme.)

There are a lot of fundamentally flawed arguments like that - e.g. pre-invasion indigenous people on the coast of Australia being described as totally isolated even though the historical record shows them as being brilliant sailors and the numerous islands between Australia and the Asian mainland are reachable by walking in places, or talking about the easy dispersal of animals/crops across a continental "axis" of north/south or east/west despite huge mountain ranges and climate differences across the terrain like in Asia - and his broader assertions are also seriously problematic. Like when he's discussing the supposed advantages of the written word (completely dismissive of pictographs and no mention of signed languages, of course) he name-checks Chinese and Japanese but otherwise devotes his syllabic-complexity argument to Roman-alphabet languages. Which, no. Focusing on the languages that are easiest for you to understand is far from persuasive. (To say nothing of the historical errors in that chapter as well.) And then there's smaller things like the series of photographs of people, all not white and mostly wearing indigenous clothing and unsmiling expressions, which is totally unnecessary - if Diamond's "objection to such racist explanations [of sociocultural differences vis-a-vis a western capitalist definition of success] are is not just that they are loathsome, but also that they are wrong," then what the fuck are these pictures doing in here (p. 19)? Why does it matter what these oh so poor, less successful people look like? Jesus christ.

I could go on and discuss the further problem of his trying to fit history into a science framework, when the two have different approaches for a reason - which is, of course, not to say that the philosophies and conclusions of one can't support the other - but I think the point of Diamond's colossal hubris and scholarly failure has been sufficiently made for this review. (There are critical essays by people more professionally accomplished and generally articulate than myself out there.)

Is this the worst book ever? No. But it's still a fucking waste of space.

In the ~mid 16th century the Spanish conquistador Pizarro captured the Incan Emperor Atahualpa despite being outnumbered a few hundred to few tens of thousands. Why didn’t Atauhalpa’s warriors instead land in Spain and capture King Charles I? More generally, why did Europeans conquer the world? And what factors govern the broad trends of societies in the history of our species? Are they predominantly biological? cultural? geographical? is it all luck and chaos?

Guns, Germs, and Steel seeks to answer these questions. The central thesis is that if you carefully trace the major factors they will lead you to geography. Do you play Civilization? Of course you do. The book argues that the winner of the game of Civilization has very little to do with the players and almost everything to do with the distribution of resources near the starting locations of different civs. And if there are any biological factors (e.g. civ-specific bonuses), they are negligible in the scheme of things (as it is in Civ games as well). The Europeans, for example, happened to spawn next to a lot of bonus tiles for a wide variety of nutritious plants giving +10 food, and also bonus tiles for several domesticable animals, giving +5 food and +5 production. Any civ player can tell you that if your population grows faster and the cities become bigger and denser you will get lots of nice bonuses: specialist civilians, social stratification, faster research, more culture, etc. Over several hundred years these bonuses add up and the next thing you know you're showing up with 10 +28 attack Musketeers in a territory full of gold tiles defended by a +8 attack Aztec warrior. Unmodeled by Civilization games, you also enjoy carrying more germs that you’re also resistant to, and it's cheaper to establish trade routes west-east instead of south-north due to climates (convenient for Eurasia, not so much for America).

These are very important questions and it’s all great to know and contemplate, but dammit is it painful - the book feels like eating your vegetables. Be prepared to hear (in excruciating detail) about different protein:carb:fat ratios of dozens of plants species you’ve never heard of. Be prepared to learn much more than you ever wanted about all possible candidate animals for domestication. Jared in fact manages to enumerate them all. These sections are definitely interesting and you can’t help but admire the thoroughness and attention to detail here, but it’s exhausting.

There are a few more things that can be critiqued:
- the hypocrisy in the dubious claim that Papa New Guineans are smarter than whites is jarring, considering that the whole point of the book is to discredit biological determinism.
- the book is almost certainly sometimes guilty of post-hoc reasoning, but admittedly Jared is aware of this criticism and tries hard to avoid it.
- the pacing is slightly off: there are hundreds of pages devoted to plant seeds, and only dozens of pages devoted to much more interesting patterns of development (especially in the last chapter).

I can’t decide if I should recommend this book. I personally liked it (i.e. 3/5 on Goodreads scale). It was a significant undertaking and I feel that I’ve gained quite a bit of insight into the development of societies in the history of our species, but… at what cost? **shudders**.

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]

This is a thought-provoking, deeply interesting, controversial book investigating the reasons behind the bafflingly different rate of development of human societies in different parts of the world.

The main thesis of the author is that geographic aspects represent the overwhelming ultimate set of causal factors, and they played out mostly at the very beginning of societal development, mainly in prehistoric times.

The author uses very broad brush strokes to develop his main themes, both in geographical terms (he treats the whole of Eurasia plus North Africa as one single entity, which he then subsequently compares with the whole of the Americas, the rest of Africa and Australasia), as well as in temporal terms (the last two thousand years of human history are virtually ignored), and even in political terms (all societies more complex than an egalitarian tribe are defined “kleptocracies” managed by self-serving elites that extract tribute).
This very broad approach is compounded by his methodological tendency to artificially identify and distinguish between ‘ultimate’ explanations and mere ‘proximate’ ones; an approach which brings him to minimize aspects of cultural idiosyncrasies, randomness, and all local cultural factors unrelated to the environment; approach which pushes him to assert that the most critical influences on modern history had already occurred mostly in prehistoric times, and definitely before the birth of Christ, virtually discounting the last two thousand years of history as a foregone conclusion determined by prior developments.
I have the feeling that his view is ultimately based on a Marxist-like type of historical perspective, whereby specific historical events are merely accidents, there is little or no role for chance, randomness and individual action, and where complex feedback loops, culture and ideology, religion, war outcomes and politics are just super-structural elements derived from more fundamental materialistic aspects. This view is now considered obsolete by many mainstream historians (or at least incomplete).

The author also seems to have a pretty “linear” vision of history, whereby the same collection of factors invariably determine the same outcome – my personal feeling is that many historians would disagree with this perspective and state, on the contrary, that one of the complexities of the study of history is that history is not physics, as the interaction “laws” and the independent variables themselves might vary depending on the period and particular sets of circumstances: for example, the weight of geographical factors in more technologically advanced periods as opposed to prehistorical or less advanced eras. And we should always bear in mind that phenomena such as chaotic behaviour lurk even in seemingly simple physical systems, so a deterministic approach to the study of history presents many potential dangers. Even more quantitative and more limited in scope disciplines pertaining to human behaviour (such as economics) have repeatedly proven how identification of context-independent causal chains and prediction of future behaviour can be extremely problematic to achieve.
Yes, it is true that the author pays lips service (in the epilogue, which is the best balanced part of the book) to the irreducible complexity and to peculiar nature of any science based on the study of human behaviour, but this attempt to dilute and balance his geographical determinism is too little too late, IMO (and the author does not fail to re-iterate, even in this section, his faith in a ultimately fully deterministic long chain of causation that can fully explain all main trends of historical development).

There are also some wide generalizations in the book that are questionable at the very least: for example he uses the Spanish American conquests as a model for all European colonial expansion, and he also comes up with claims that are wrong or should be, at least, heavily qualified (such as the horse being the most decisive factor in warfare since it was domesticated 6000 years ago, until WWI – has the author ever heard of Agincourt and Crecy ? And Republican and Early Imperial Rome did not rise to military supremacy due to a superior use of cavalry).
There is also, at the beginning of the book, a really bizarre and totally unsubstantiated claim by the author that “in mental ability New Guineans are genetically superior to Westerners, and they are superior in escaping the devastating developmental disadvantages under which most children in industrialized societies now grow up”. Such a statement is scientifically very dubious (like any similar statements trying promote a naive (if not racist-driven) view to connect genetics with race and intelligence - and what is "intelligence" anyway ?); moreover it appears almost self-contradictory in this book, as the author himself, in the rest of the book, very successfully dismantles any racist claim that the difference rate of development between societies is caused by genetic differences between the races.

Coming back to the main themes of the book: the broad patterns of history, according to the author, are all ultimately caused by essentially “geographical” factors: the availability of a variety of easily domesticable crops facilitating an early adoption of agriculture, of big domesticable animals, and the longitudinal gradient (the Eurasian east-west axis being favourable compared to the North-South axis of the Americas) facilitating or impeding diffusion of agriculture, trade and technology.

It must be said that the author main thesis is argued and documented very convincingly (however I must say that I can't assess the validity of some of the author's scientific claims in fields such as genetics, anthropology, botany, linguistics and evolutionary biology – and the referencing material is strangely lacking, which is slightly suspicious), and the book is brilliantly written, very readable, full with fascinating insights and rich with extremely interesting information in many different fields. It has been a reading pleasure and I learned quite a bit from it.

The author's main theory of the critical importance of geography is well supported by several examples (even though it must be said that the author appears somewhat selective in his analysis, conveniently alternatively over- or under-emphasizing the importance of geographical barriers in the diffusion of agriculture, trade and technology - he also under-emphasizes the important role played by internal wars, competition and migration in the development of Europe and the Middle East in historical times) and the book contains many ideas that are, in my opinion, very important (even if not complete nor conclusive) in the debate over the reasons why some historical patterns diverged so significantly among the different parts of the globe.

It is a pity that the author leaves out so many important factors, and so many questions very partially answered (such as why did Europe gain supremacy as opposed to China, considering that China, soon before the start of the big European expansion, was as advanced – probably more advanced than – its European counterparts ? ).

But make no mistake – with all its problems, it is a nevertheless a good, highly readable, informative, fascinating book, recommended to all lovers of history who want to gain original insights and perspectives into the broad patterns of historical development. I definitely learned many interesting things and gained a better appreciation of geographical factors as significant determinants in the development of human societies.

3 stars

Guns, Germs, and Steel was recommended to me by my father. He asked me to read it and tell him what I thought of what Jared Diamond says. Generally speaking, this book outlines the different factors that contribute to a society succeeding and thriving, and how these factors have created the world we live in today. To answer my father, I said that I enjoyed it. It made me reflect a lot, it helped me form arguments in my IB ESS class, and in general gave me a nice insight into human history. Then, he said something that I will try to reflect on in this review: "After reading this, do you think society could have formed any other way?"

Before I get to answering that question, I'll go through a the things that I liked and didn't like about Diamond's work. This book was so unbelievably interesting. It's format made it very easy to follow along, and together it made perfect sense. This helped Diamond strengthen his theses. This organisation also makes this work very accessible, which for me (a person who wants to get more into non-fiction), was a great benefit! There are a bunch of diagrams, graphs, maps, and pictures in this book, which once again, made the reading experience more enjoyable; if you got bored, or got confused, there was sure to be an image soon to make you want to read again. The third thing that I really liked about this was the conversational narration that dominates the book. At times I felt like Mr. Diamond and I were having a conversation about the history of the world. When I switched over to the audiobook for some portions, this was accentuated even more. This style of narration ensured that you never felt like reading a history textbook, which was something I was scared of when entering this novel.

The things that I didn't really like were how the chapters meandered sometimes or just went on and on about the same thing. I feel like 50 pages could be cut. Then again, I am just one person. Another person might find value in how Diamond proves his claims through various examples and scenarios. For me, it just got a bit repetitive and I didn't have the attention span for it. Other than that, when there was a tie-in to something discussed in a previous chapter, then said thing would be proven AGAIN through various examples in the context of whatever is the main topic in this new chapter. Again, someone might find this very interesting, personally it made me a bit tired.

Ok, now to what I actually want to discuss: my father's question. After reading this book, I think that no, there is no other way society could have progressed. Maybe if we would have arisen originally on a different continent, we would be in a different place right now, but I don't know and that is what I find to be so interesting. In the prologue, Diamond sets up a thought experiment where you imagine yourself as travelling back into the past and watching the world starts all over again, but not intervening. I think that if this time-traveller version of me would be very very educated in the ways of history, importance of geography, language, etc. I would be able to predict fairly well where things will be. This makes me wonder if it is possible to predict where we will be in a thousand years or so... Kind of like how Hari Seldon does in Asimov's Foundation.

In conclusion, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a good work of non-fiction. I liked how it made me reevaluate how I see the world around me. However, it did have some characteristics that I just didn't really click with. I recommend it, if you like history and are interested in why we are where we are now.

I give this book 4 stars because it has some very interesting ideas that provoke thought and inquiry. It also offers plausible explanations that often ring true. I don't give it 5 stars because it suffers from certain drawbacks.

I love his analysis and interpretation of causes that show why civilization arose variously in diverse and distinct locations of the planet. I love how his causes make sense. His rejection of race-based politics is quite clear. I like
how his explanations lead us to reexamine patriotism, nationality, group affiliation, judgment of other cultures... There is definitely a lot to learn and what better way to learn than from someone who loves to learn/teach by
engaging.

Contrary to another reader on goodreads, I couldn't wait to get to the "around the world" chapters. That is what the book was building towards in my opinion. Towards explaining why the world today looks like it does.

Jared Diamond is not much into referencing materials which is strange given that he is an academic. One could claim that this book is written for a wider audience and is meant to be more approachable and if so, Diamond makes some very bald statements which are very hard to substantiate in the absence of citations. For instance, his claim that the hard sciences look down upon softer sciences like history. I heard similar claims in graduate school. But where is the evidence for such claims and should they be taken seriously if there isn't supporting scientific evidence for it? I don't doubt that such evidence may exist if he makes the statement but I have a hard time as a reader who needs more proof. He makes a similar bald assertion towards the front of the book about the prevalence of race-based explanations for differences in development which again I know exist based on similar conversations but which I would never take seriously anyway, unless someone could show it to me using science.

There is a lot of redundancy in the book. The four major causes are drummed, driven and pummeled into one. A different organization of the book could have lead to less redundancy and more salient communication of points. That said, he does still get his points across. Lovely pictures in the book. The maps and tables are a little thin on resources but the author tries to provide a reading list toward the end of the book for each chapter.

The PBS show based on his book more pithily stated and demonstrated the unequal distribution of material wealth, health and resources around the globe and made clear who has benefited and at whose expense. It is not very often that any westerner, let alone an academic has so openly shown through their work how viciously parts of the human race have treated certain other parts of it. His book does make me want to go further back and look also at what lead to racial distinctions in the first place.

In the new edition of the book, there is an especially interesting chapter on Japan and the Japanese people and language and how they might be Korean in ethnicity. This may not go down well with a Japanese audience with their extreme nationalism and their emphasis on superiority over neighboring cultures. However, it is perfectly plausible and a fascinating read.

--
www.aprilandradsdiablog.blogspot.com

This book that reads like a transcript for a documentary, analyzing why some civilizations flourished and others did not in all of human history. It is well-written and well-organized. Diamond examines such topics as the development of agriculture, domestication of animals, geographical location, the surrounding environment, proliferation of languages, transmission of diseases, and so much more. To fully appreciate this book, I think it requires a strong interest in sociology, anthropology, history, biology, archeology, or, preferably, a combination of many of these areas. It contains a wealth of information and is conveyed in an impartial manner. Diamond makes a compelling case against the various rationales that have been used to justify racism. I found it fascinating.

THIS BOOK ATTEMPTS TO PROVIDE A SHORT HISTORY OF EVERYbody for the last 13,000 years. The question motivating the book is: Why did history unfold differently on different continents?...

Diamond immediately takes great pains to shoot down any ideas of one race being more intelligent than another. Yes, some thought so, but they've been refuted for long enough that I thought he belabored the point. This section does introduce us to his method of argument which is to set up straw men & knock them down. I don't care for it much since the questions aren't always honest or complete.

Eurasia is an iffy area for Diamond's purposes. It often includes northern Africa, but generally not eastern Asia or northern Europe. This makes sense in the context of the plant & animal species available to the humans of the time. Eurasia had the most species of both that could readily be domesticated. Of all the plants, only a few were readily domesticated. In Eurasia, the number made for a critical mass which led to earlier civilization. Giving up hunter-gatherer often isn't an advantage to individuals, but is to the tribes/clans as a whole. More food reserves, more specialization (leaders, soldiers, farmers), better able & pressure to compete & share discoveries.

It's amazing how few plants & animals can be domesticated - only 14 large animals by his count. There isn't that much megafauna (animals generally averaging over 100 lbs) that early man didn't wipe out & most of those evolved with man. They survived because they learned early & well to fear & avoid or live with us. In almost every case where they didn't, such as in Australia & the Americas, they went extinct shortly after we showed up.

Successful domestication is based on the Anna Karenina Syndrome, a name given due to the first line of the novel.
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
IOW, a happy family has many things right while it only takes one of any number of things to make an unhappy one. Plants & animals must have everything right to become domesticated, especially early on. Wheat needed very little modification & we domesticated it (or vice versa) very early while we still don't domesticate oaks because they take so long to mature, breeding characteristics*, & it's so hard to economically pick their acorns due to their size & competition with other animals.
(* A complex of genes controls tannin production, so it's very difficult to breed a non-bitter acorn. If only 1 gene were in control, we might have domesticated them (pecans) even if it were a recessive one. Oaks just had too many things wrong.)

The proximity to animals & each other also led to more disease. The originating groups of humans survived with immunity, but when they met another group without similar immunity, the new group was often wiped out. Obvious examples are the natives of the Americas & the spread by Europeans of small pox & other diseases.

Eurasia also had the most contiguous land along generally the same latitude. This helped spread domesticated plants, animals, diseases, & ideas. North to south, like sub-Saharan Africa or Mexico to South America, is a problem since temperature, hours of daylight, & general climate varies too greatly for many plants & animals to survive a slow expansion across them. While humans could adapt to environments from desert to jungle, their plants, animals, inventions, & diseases often couldn't/didn't.

Different environments also slowed humans so not only weren't inventions spread, but there wasn't the pressure to develop/adopt new methods or die. Sub-Saharan Africa is considered an entirely separate area, almost a continent of its own, from northern Africa in terms of evolution. Australia, New Zealand, & Tasmania were all distinct from the rest of the world & even each other.

So, the answer to the central question is civilizations developed differently due to their environments:
1) The number & variety of plants & animals that were available to domesticate.
2) The ease of diffusion & migration within the continent & 3) between continents.
4) Continental population size.
He really should add a 5th - plain luck. As he points out, in the early 15th century, China was ready to explore the world, but political infighting in their unified government killed the exploration party almost a century before Columbus set out. While Columbus was originally turned down, he had multiple governments to try, one of which eventually opened the doors to expansion which led to many of them - all European - competing around the globe to grab the prizes.

The audio edition of this book is abridged, although I hadn't realized that when I started listening & it sure seemed long enough. It wasn't until I got the ebook to see some of the maps & reread certain sections that I realized how much had been cut out. Just the epilogue of the ebook seems to cover the subject matter well enough.

Table Of Contents:
Prologue: Yali's Question: The regionally differing courses of historyt13
Ch. 1t Up to the Starting Line: What happened on all the continents before 11,000 B.C.?t35
Ch. 2 A Natural Experiment of History: How geography molded societies on Polynesian islandst53
Ch. 3tCollision at Cajamarca: Why the Inca emperor Atahuallpa did not capture King Charles I of Spaint67
Ch. 4tFarmer Power: The roots of guns, germs, and steelt85
Ch. 5tHistory's Haves and Have-Nots: Geographic differences in the onset of food productiont93
Ch. 6tTo Farm or Not to Farm: Causes of the spread of food productiont104
Ch. 7tHow to Make an Almond: The unconscious development of ancient cropst114
Ch. 8tApples or Indians: Why did peoples of some regions fail to domesticate plants?t131
Ch. 9tZebras, Unhappy Marriages, and the Anna Karenina Principle: Why were most big wild mammal species never domesticated?t157
Ch. 10tSpacious Skies and Tilted Axes: Why did food production spread at different rates on different continents?t176
Ch. 11tLethal Gift of Livestock: The evolution of germst195
Ch. 12tBlueprints and Borrowed Letters: The evolution of writingt215
Ch. 13tNecessity's Mother: The evolution of technologyt239
Ch. 14tFrom Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy: The evolution of government and religiont265
Ch. 15tYali's People: The histories of Australia and New Guineat295
Ch. 16tHow China became Chinese: The history of East Asiat322
Ch. 17tSpeedboat to Polynesia: The history of the Austronesian expansiont334
Ch. 18tHemispheres Colliding: The histories of Eurasia and the Americas comparedt354
Ch. 19tHow Africa became Black: The history of Africat376
tEpilogue: The Future of Human

It's important to remember that this book was first published in 1997, before the mapping of the human genome & subsequent discoveries which invalidated many of the hypothesis that he mentions, such as parallel evolution, & has nailed down our origins & migrations across the globe far more accurately. His synopsis & maunderings in the beginning are interesting only from a historic point of view, although he seems to pretty much have the basics right, so it doesn't invalidate his later conclusions. It does stretch that section out a lot, though. It's cool to see how well a different science has nailed down so many questions & in such a short time.

Overall, very good, but a bit dated & long. Grover Gardner did a great job reading this & I'd suggest the abridged version backed by a book since the maps help & reading more in some areas was good.