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Guns, Germs, and Steel
by Jared Diamond
This is not light reading. The author goes into a lot of detail covering a wide range of evidence supporting his thesis. But damn it’s interesting.
The premise for the book is stated in the first chapter “Yali’s Question”. That is why did some societies/people advance differently than others. For instance, why did the people of Eurasia develop so many products and the people of Guinea remain basically hunter-gathers. The author rephrases this question and wonders why did the countries of Europe conquer and colonize the Americas and not the Native Americans conquer and colonize Europe. He later rephrases it again as why didn’t Africa conquer Europe and import Native Americans to work as slaves.
Thus begins a very interesting analysis.
The author deals with the Racism issue early in the book. He attributes any appearance of more “intelligence” as a product of the environment and is not biological.
Differences in intelligence are more attributable to social environment and educational opportunities than to biological reasons.
(It’s been a while since I read it but The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould deals with this question quite well.)
The title of the book “Guns, Germs, and Steel” serves as a shorthand for the reasons Europeans conquered the natives of the New World instead of Native Americans colonizing Europe. The immediate reasons are the technology employed by the Europeans based of guns, steel weapons, and horses, the germs they brought with them to the New World, the ships that allowed them to cross the oceans, the centralized political organization of European states, and the communication gained through writing.
A major part of his argument is that the production of food allowed these civilizations to advance. Once food was available people no longer needed to be hunting and gathering each day. The domestication of plants and animals allowed people to settle down in one place and provided them the stability to develop better ways of living.
This domestication of plants required that the plant have certain characteristics making it a reliable source of food. It also needed a climate that allowed the plants to grow. Out of all the plants available in a location not all of them had the needed requirements. Likewise all locations did not have the qualifying climate.
The same held true for animals. Very few animals have ever been domesticated. Even over the last few thousand years there are no new domesticated animals. He attributes this to the Anna Karenina principle.
It is pointed out that in terms of conquering an area nothing matched germs and their accompanying diseases. More people were killed by germs and the diseases they caused than by any military campaign.
The germs themselves were not something that resulted from some creative design. The author points out frequently that agriculture and its accompanying settlements created an ideal laboratory for germs. Especially living in close proximity with animals. He also says that living in dense populated areas helped the germs spread their diseases, but also helped people develop immunities. It was these immunities that the Native Americans lacked when the disease was brought to the Americas.
The author emphasizes the importance of continents in the spread of advances in civilizations. His analysis deals with each continent individually. An important part is the axis of a continent. For the purposes of this book he combines Europe and Asia into Eurasia. Eurasia with its East/West axis facilitated the spread of technology and food production because the area shared the same latitude. That meant the plants and animals from one area weren’t subject to huge changes in environment from one part of the continent to another.
Likewise people, plants and animals in the Americas and in Africa had to travel through and survive various climates from any travels along the axis of those continents.
One of the questions the author brings up is why did Europe conquer so much of the world and not China. China had a long head start in the development of food and especially technology.
One of the reasons is the early unification of the people of China under one government. The resulting authoritarian rule prevented the competition of ideas. That was not the case in Europe where several small states competed with each other for dominance. There any development which gave one state an advantage over another was quickly exploited.
While reading this I was arguing with myself (I won) about whether this was a “History” book. I felt that it is important to understand the founding of the civilizations that I read about. At the end of the book the author himself makes this argument about whether history is a science. He states that to some “History is just one damn fact after another.” In this book the author is using archeology, linguistics and genetics to make his case.
This book is the first of a trilogy. While I was reading this I doubted I would tackle the next one anytime soon. Learning this much is fatiguing. But this was an enjoyable and enlightening book so I will be getting the next one, Collapse, soon.
by Jared Diamond
This is not light reading. The author goes into a lot of detail covering a wide range of evidence supporting his thesis. But damn it’s interesting.
The premise for the book is stated in the first chapter “Yali’s Question”. That is why did some societies/people advance differently than others. For instance, why did the people of Eurasia develop so many products and the people of Guinea remain basically hunter-gathers. The author rephrases this question and wonders why did the countries of Europe conquer and colonize the Americas and not the Native Americans conquer and colonize Europe. He later rephrases it again as why didn’t Africa conquer Europe and import Native Americans to work as slaves.
Thus begins a very interesting analysis.
The author deals with the Racism issue early in the book. He attributes any appearance of more “intelligence” as a product of the environment and is not biological.
n The objection to such racist explanations is not just that they are loathsome, but also that they are wrong. Sound evidence for the existence of human differences in intelligence that parallel human differences in technology is lacking. n(Page 19)
Differences in intelligence are more attributable to social environment and educational opportunities than to biological reasons.
(It’s been a while since I read it but The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould deals with this question quite well.)
The title of the book “Guns, Germs, and Steel” serves as a shorthand for the reasons Europeans conquered the natives of the New World instead of Native Americans colonizing Europe. The immediate reasons are the technology employed by the Europeans based of guns, steel weapons, and horses, the germs they brought with them to the New World, the ships that allowed them to cross the oceans, the centralized political organization of European states, and the communication gained through writing.
A major part of his argument is that the production of food allowed these civilizations to advance. Once food was available people no longer needed to be hunting and gathering each day. The domestication of plants and animals allowed people to settle down in one place and provided them the stability to develop better ways of living.
This domestication of plants required that the plant have certain characteristics making it a reliable source of food. It also needed a climate that allowed the plants to grow. Out of all the plants available in a location not all of them had the needed requirements. Likewise all locations did not have the qualifying climate.
The same held true for animals. Very few animals have ever been domesticated. Even over the last few thousand years there are no new domesticated animals. He attributes this to the Anna Karenina principle.
n To be domesticated, a candidate wild species must possess many different characteristics. Lack of any single required characteristic dooms efforts at domestication, just as it dooms efforts at building a happy marriage.(Page 169).
n
It is pointed out that in terms of conquering an area nothing matched germs and their accompanying diseases. More people were killed by germs and the diseases they caused than by any military campaign.
The germs themselves were not something that resulted from some creative design. The author points out frequently that agriculture and its accompanying settlements created an ideal laboratory for germs. Especially living in close proximity with animals. He also says that living in dense populated areas helped the germs spread their diseases, but also helped people develop immunities. It was these immunities that the Native Americans lacked when the disease was brought to the Americas.
The author emphasizes the importance of continents in the spread of advances in civilizations. His analysis deals with each continent individually. An important part is the axis of a continent. For the purposes of this book he combines Europe and Asia into Eurasia. Eurasia with its East/West axis facilitated the spread of technology and food production because the area shared the same latitude. That meant the plants and animals from one area weren’t subject to huge changes in environment from one part of the continent to another.
Likewise people, plants and animals in the Americas and in Africa had to travel through and survive various climates from any travels along the axis of those continents.
One of the questions the author brings up is why did Europe conquer so much of the world and not China. China had a long head start in the development of food and especially technology.
One of the reasons is the early unification of the people of China under one government. The resulting authoritarian rule prevented the competition of ideas. That was not the case in Europe where several small states competed with each other for dominance. There any development which gave one state an advantage over another was quickly exploited.
While reading this I was arguing with myself (I won) about whether this was a “History” book. I felt that it is important to understand the founding of the civilizations that I read about. At the end of the book the author himself makes this argument about whether history is a science. He states that to some “History is just one damn fact after another.” In this book the author is using archeology, linguistics and genetics to make his case.
This book is the first of a trilogy. While I was reading this I doubted I would tackle the next one anytime soon. Learning this much is fatiguing. But this was an enjoyable and enlightening book so I will be getting the next one, Collapse, soon.
