Environment is the ultimate cause. To those offended: why invent a plow if you have no means to pull it?

books:


	• Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies Jared M. Diamond W. W. Norton & Company, 1999 - 480 pages average customer review:based on 1072 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Environment is the ultimate cause. To those offended: why invent a plow if you have no means to pull it?

In 1532, in the Peruvian highland town of Cajamarca, a decisive moment took place during the greatest collision in modern history. A ragtag group of 168 Spanish soldiers, led by the conquistador Francisco Pizarro, captured the Inca emperor Atahuallpa who was surrounded by his army of 80,000 soldiers in the heart of the Inca Empire. In "Guns, Germs, and Steel", Jared Diamond, uses this dramatic episode of human history to trace a chain of causation starting with a set of proximate factors and leading to ultimate causes explaining this outcome and that of many similar collisions between colonizers and native peoples. Steel swords and armor, guns, horses, maritime technology, and writing systems used by the Spaniards, as well as diseases that arrived with the Europeans, and resulted in a power struggle dividing the Inca Empire, are the proximate factors that Diamond lumps in the term "Guns, Germs, and Steel". He then goes into pursuit of the ultimate causes in the chain. He seeks the broad patterns of history that explain why the rise of complex human societies unfolded differently on different continents over the last 13,000 years, since the end of the last ice age known as the Pleistocene. After extensive research and analysis on world history, geography, botany, zoology, archeology, linguistics, anthropology, and other fields, he concludes that differences in continental environments, not in human biology, led to the rise of complex human societies.

The ultimate factor according to Diamond concerns the rise of food production. This is influenced by several environmental factors such as the availability of domestic-able plants and animals. It is not sufficient to have Mediterranean-like climates which are the most suitable for growing crops. Such climates exist in California, Southeastern Australia, and Southern Africa. A large selection of plants and animals that are suitable for domestication is essential. The author conducts a detailed study based on the literature. A case that stands out is that of wheat vs. corn. Wheat's nutritional and cultivation characteristics provided an advantage to Fertile Crescent societies in their transition to food producing from hunting-gathering status. The Americas on the other hand had to make do with corn which had a longer evolutionary path from its original wild variety to the one eventually used as food by humans. Moreover, it is less nutritious than wheat, and is lower yielding as a crop. The Americas, Australia, and sub-Saharan Africa also suffered from a deficiency of animals that are good candidates for domestication. The Americas' lama is not as useful as a pack animal as is the horse of Eurasia. Africa's large mammals such as the zebra and the elephant had characteristics the author deals with in detail that prevented domestication by humans. Similarly, Australia lacked suitable plant and animal varieties to domesticate.

In addition to the availability of good starting plant and animal material, Diamond describes three other sets of environmental factors that affected the rise of food production throughout the world. A second set controlled the rate of diffusion within the continents and was mainly influenced by the orientation of the continent's axis. An East-West axis, such as in Eurasia, fostered easy movement and migration of plants and animals, as well as ideas and technology. A North-South axis as in the Americas and Africa provided obstacles to such diffusion due to the varying climates along longitudinal lines. The third set of factors affected the rate of diffusion between continents and was mainly caused by geographic isolation such as the case of Australia and the separation between the hemispheres. The fourth set of factors was the differences in area and population. Larger landmass and population density increases the number of potential innovators, the number of societies, and competition among them. Eurasia had the largest landmass and population. The Americas covered a large area but were fragmented by geography and ecology.

The four major sets of environmental differences among the continents thus resulted in significant variation in when societies transitioned from hunter-gatherers to farmers, and in whether that transition occurred at all. The onset of food production then starts a chain reaction, giving humans surplus food to increase their numbers and support specialists: soldiers, chiefs, scribes, and artisans. This in turn leads to developing technology including weapons and writing. Farming societies thus enjoy advantages in numbers, technology, and organization over hunter-gathering societies and are more likely to overcome them. Another by-product of farming societies are the germs caused by livestock that people in these societies develop immunity against.

Diamond subsequently goes around the world in five chapters for a tour of all the continents analyzing how environmental factors affected societal developments in them. He applies his reasoning and enforces it using evidence from the historic record, archeology, linguistics, and genetics. A striking example is that of Australia, New Guinea to its northeast, and Indonesia, an island group northwest of Australia. Diamond explains how geography, climate, availability of domestic-able plants and animals, degree of isolation from surrounding lands, among other factors contributed to the state of societal development in those three regions. The result was stone-age hunter gatherers in Australia, stone-age farmers in New Guinea, and iron-age farmers in Indonesia. In the chapter How Africa Became Black he describes the expansion of the black Bantu farmers from subequatorial West Africa into East and South Africa, engulfing the hunting gathering Pygmy and Khoisan peoples in the process. The case of Polynesia is a very telling natural experiment. The same people traveled by canoes starting from Asia and spread out widely into the south Pacific islands. Within a millennium, the Polynesian descendants reached highly varying states of development from a proto-state with intensive food production in Hawaii to hunting-gathering on the Chatham's. In the other continental chapters, Diamond delves into How China Became Chinese about the history of East Asia, and Hemispheres Colliding about the histories of Eurasia and the Americas.

Diamond asserts that the four major sets of environmental factors affecting the trajectories of human societies are undisputable quantifiable facts. For example, New Guinea is much smaller, has far fewer big animal species, and is more isolated than Eurasia. It seems obvious to conclude that the environment of those two places caused their differing levels of societal complexity. Yet such arguments invite strong criticisms of "geographic determinism" by historians. What troubles the critics is that human creativity is ostensibly discounted. Diamond points out that it is not. Human inventiveness still matters but it is dependent on the presence of favorable starting material and conditions to utilize its inventions.

In the Epilogue, Diamond further deals with other variables that tend to complicate the study of human history. For example, the factors involved in shorter time scales and smaller geographic scales that would help explain why it was people from Europe, not the Fertile Crescent or China, who colonized the new world. He also considers the case of cultural factors and individual influences that may act as wild cards making history unpredictable. But despite these variables he contends that it is the environmental factors that determine the broad pattern of history. As a case in point against the Great Man theory of the exceptional individual he reasons that although Alexander the Great probably changed the course of Western Eurasian states, he did not make Eurasia a place of literate, food-producing states with iron tools at a time Australia had only illiterate, hunter-gatherer tribes with non-metal tools. However to aid in the analysis of such problems with a large number of individual variables he suggests the study of human history as a science using scientific methodologies.

The question about the fates of human societies represents a very complex problem due to the number of individual variables involved but there is little doubt in this reader's mind that the environmental factors examined by Diamond are at the base of the broad historic pattern that set societies on different trajectories as he concludes. Diamond's thoughtful and thoroughly researched study of world history in the last 13,000 years leading to the modern world offers a convincing explanation full of examples and detailed research with extensive references. This is true even though at times some of his explanations do seem convenient or wishful thinking. However, acknowledging the causal effect of environment on human societies, the reader cannot help wondering about the second part of the author's thesis, that human biology is not a causal factor. This is potentially a minefield but wouldn't 13,000 years in separate and isolated environments result in biological differences due to evolving genetics? The resulting genetic differences would then become a causal factor though not the ultimate one. The author himself opines that New Guineans are on average smarter than Eurasians due to the need to survive in a harsh environment. In any case, the main gripe detractors have with the overall thesis is that it undermines the importance of human inventiveness. That seems to this reader as just another case of human arrogance, the belief that we are exceptional and have full control over our fates. Yes, it is part of the equation, but why would a human without a horse invent stirrups, or a plow with no large animal to pull it?

No matter what position one takes on its thesis, the book is worth reading for its wealth of information about the environmental condition of the continents. It is an enlightening, captivating, and highly readable book. This is definitely a must read for anyone interested in human history or seeking to understand the state of the modern world.

for more information click here

Intelligently written book

Prior to reading "Guns, Germs, and Steel," I had a very broad sense of knowledge in the history of man. I have been able to use the valuable lessons of this book, such as how food production was domesticated, and why certain societies prosper and other fail, to establish an economic forecast for our current trials and tribulations. Coming from a business background, I am now more affluent in rationalizing why certain economic conditions constrain one country while allowing another to prosper. I highly recommend this book without any hesitation to anyone interested in increasing their general knowledge of human societies.

for more information click here

Fairly good

Good overall, but I have several problems.

I have seen his central points made years ago, in books such as Plagues and Peoples by William McNeill and The European Miracle by Eric Jones. I know it is not an academic text, but more credit in the body of the text was owed to the people who ACTUALLY invented the theories he is using.
Lacks scientific detachment. Obviously lets his emotions get in the way of his logic. Westerners are the only ones eligible for criticism or anger, even if others would qualify for some of the same criticisms.
Finaly, he covers too much ground. This needed to be a much larger work and to use some of his own ORIGINAL research rather than the cut and paste job he did on others books.

for more information click here

An view into big history

I am half way the book, but it gives me an unexpected overview of the history of homo sapiens since the latets ice-time.
Why went things as they went? Why conquered 168 Spaniards the Inca empire and dit not 168 inca's appear at Madrid and conquered the Spanish empire. What was the infuence of germs that were coupled to the domesticated animals?
And how futile - not in the book but my opnion - are the excuses made by some modern western governments of a course of history that nobody designed? What determined that course? Read this book!

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, page 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

hot

not?

What's your opinion?

Write a review and share your thoughts!

recommendations

Books to Expand and then Dangerously Contract Your Mind
Imperialism: the Perennial Danger
Primer in food studies reading
Books I've Read
David's List

search for books
guns, germs, fates, germs, guns, human, societies, steel

Impressum / about us