Analysis
Jared Diamond, an evolutionary biologist and biogeographer, wants to demonstrate that the differential development of human societies is not the result of differences among the intelligence of different people, but the dissimilarities in their environments. In Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Diamond asserts that changing the environment of a society would change its evolutionary path.
Human history is the transformation of societies from hunter-gatherers to farmer-herders. Farming and herding, which Diamond calls food production, result in food surpluses, which in turn leads to all the characteristics of more advanced societies: large, densely populated, specialized members, technological, literate, and hosts for epidemic diseases.
Diamond argues that the area we call West Asia (the Fertile Crescent), Europe, and North Africa had an immense advantage over the rest of the world in the development of food production. Most of the large-seeded grass species are native to this region, as are thirteen of the fourteen species of large mammals domesticated before 1900. As a result, food productions in Eurasia occurred sooner than in other parts of the world.
Diamond appreciates that he will be accused of geographical or biological determinism. He argues that there is a significant distinction between determinacy and predictability. He introduces the concepts of “cultural idiosyncrasies” and “individual idiosyncrasies.” The former are cultural features which predispose a society toward particular choices. The latter is another way to describe the impact of great individuals upon history. Diamond believes that individual leaders and cultural idiosyncrasies influence the details of the historical process. However, because some environments were more favorable and supportive than others for human inventiveness, human history, in its broadest and most sweeping aspects, is determined.
Sources for Further Study
The Economist. CCCXLIV, July 19, 1997, p. 4.
Kirkus Reviews. LXV, January 15, 1997, p. 113.
Lancet. CCCL, July 5, 1997, p. 75.
Library Journal. CXXII, February 15, 1997, p. 159.
Los Angeles Times Book Review. March 9, 1997, p. 4.
Nature. CCCLXXXVI, March 27, 1997, p. 339.
The New Leader. LXXX, March 10, 1997, p. 19.
The New York Review of Books. XLIV, May 15, 1997, p. 48.
The New York Times Book Review. CII, June 15, 1997, p. 13.
Newsweek. CXXIX, June 16, 1997, p. 47.
The Observer. April 13, 1997, p. 17.
Publishers Weekly. CCXLIV, January 13, 1997, p. 60.
Guns, Germs, and Steel
Why did Christopher Columbus “discover” America rather than a Native American discovering Europe? In sixteenth-century sub-Saharan Africa or nineteenth-century Australia, why did the Indigenous peoples lack the technology that was commonplace in contemporary Europe? Why did the peoples of Europe and Asia farm, herd animals, and build cities earlier or on a grander scale than the inhabitants of the other continents? For many centuries, the answers to these questions were usually cast in racial terms. Whether the cause was a purposeful Almighty or Darwinian evolution, Europeans were innately biologically “superior” to other races, cultures, or societies, had developed “civilization” faster than non-Europeans, and hence were able to conquer them. Such superiority was usually assumed to be in the form of higher intelligence manifested in more sophisticated technology, more complex political systems, and the creation of modern science.
Jared Diamond, an evolutionary biologist and biogeographer who has worked extensively in New Guinea, rejects racially oriented explanations for differential human development. He agrees that the explication for European success is biological but believes that intelligence had nothing to do with the differential development of societies. Geography had everything to do with it. Differences among environments resulted in dissimilarities among societies. Change its environment and a society would follow a very different evolutionary path. Although human history was not determined in detail by biology, the ultimate causes of the grand sweeps of human history were environmental and geographical. In taking this approach to human history, Diamond hopes to make the discipline more akin to the historical sciences (ecology, paleontology, evolutionary biology) and less a humanities or social science field.
For Diamond to demonstrate how environment and geography influence the development of societies, he must first explain how humans obtain food. According to him, human societies can be divided into either hunter-gatherers, who hunt wild animals and/or gather wild plants, or farmer-herders, who domesticate plants and animals and eat the resulting livestock and crops. The latter ultimately have an advantage over the former. Farming and herding, which Diamond calls food production, result in food surpluses, which in turn lead to larger populations and sedentary, stratified societies with specialized members (such as warriors). These larger and more densely populated societies create technology, invent writing, and serve as hosts for epidemic diseases, the three significant factors in the ability of one society to conquer another.
The key factor that determines the relative state of one society versus another, then, is when those societies made the transformation from hunter-gatherers to food producers. Some societies never do, at least not in the time allotted to them by history before their conquest by other societies. Hence, the fate of Native Americans and the Aboriginal Australians was sealed when they came into contact with the food producers of Europe. Others made the transformation relatively late or only partially. As a result, not all food-producing societies turned out to be equal. Again, the food producers of Europe easily conquered the food producers of Mesoamerica and South America because they had more of the benefits of food production than the Aztecs or Incas. Specifically, they had superior technology and domesticated animals in abundance. The most important point that Diamond wants to make is that the ultimate cause of differences between food-producing societies, or the reason why some societies never make the transformation, is geographical rather than racial.
For a society to make the transformation from hunter-gatherers to food producers, it must learn either independently or from other societies to domesticate plants and large mammals. The probability of learning to domesticate is dependent upon the availability of potential candidates. It is here that the area called West Asia (the Fertile Crescent), Europe, and North Africa had an immense advantage over the rest of the world. Of the fifty-six large-seeded grass species, thirty-three are native to this region. Thirty-nine of the fifty-six are native to Eurasia (Diamond’s term includes North Africa, which is environmentally much more like the rest of the Mediterranean than sub-Saharan Africa). These grass species include wheat, barley, and rice. Moreover, many of the Eurasian grass species were easier to cultivate. As a result, food production in Eurasia occurred sooner than in other parts of the world.
Plants, however, are but part of the food production package. Domesticated animals are equally important. Again, Eurasia had an enormous advantage. More than half of the 148 candidates for domestication (defined by Diamond as terrestrial herbivorous or omnivorous mammals weighing more than one hundred pounds) are native to Eurasia. More significantly, thirteen of the fourteen species of large mammals domesticated before 1900 are native only to Eurasia. The only exception is the ancestor of the llama. Diamond argues vigorously that these fourteen are the only large mammal species capable of being domesticated, so that the people of Eurasia had what constituted an unfair advantage over the rest of the world.
Domesticated animals brought great advantages in the development of a society. The most obvious were food sources, transportation, power sources, and war. The horse, for example, was instrumental in the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica and South America. However, there was another less obvious advantage for societies which domesticated animals: the “germs” of the book’s subtitle. A number of epidemic human diseases, such as measles, smallpox, flu, and tuberculosis, apparently resulted from the evolution of viruses that affected animals into viruses that attacked humans. Those societies which domesticated animals eventually developed these diseases. Over the centuries, however, Europeans and Asians developed some resistance to the infections. In contrast, societies lacking domesticated animals were never exposed to these viruses until they were brought by Europeans. Whether in the Americas, the Pacific islands, Australia, or southern Africa, the first meeting between the Indigenous people and European germs was devastating to the Indigenous population. First contact ultimately resulted in population crashes. Perhaps nine of ten Indigenous people died of smallpox, measles, or other infectious diseases. Germs were the great conquerors of the non-Eurasian world. Steel and guns were the tools for completing the job. Only after disease had wrought its power were the absurdly small numbers of Europeans able to overcome empires.
If all these advantages weren’t enough, Eurasians had one more benefit not available to the rest of the world. The continent lies generally along an east-west axis, while the major axes of both the Americas and Africa lie north-south. Because areas along the same latitude have identical day lengths and seasonal variations, they tend to have similar environments. Thus, it is easier for crops to diffuse east-west than north-south. Combine that with the relative lack of topographical or ecological barriers, and the result was the rapid diffusion of food production from the Fertile Crescent west throughout Europe. In contrast, the tropical climates of parts of the Americas or Africa stopped or slowed down the diffusion of domesticated plants and animals. Increasing the difficulty of diffusion were local barriers such as the deserts and dry plains of south-central North America. Thus, in Eurasia there was a trade in plants, animals, and eventually in technology, which was not possible in either the Americas or Africa.
Diamond is well aware that his argument leaves him open to the charge of geographical or biological determinism. He counters that there is a significant distinction between determinacy and predictability. Human history is extremely complex and unpredictable. Human inventiveness was essential for the evolution from hunter-gather societies to great food producer empires. Diamond makes the distinction between his grand deterministic explanation and what he calls “cultural idiosyncrasies” and “individual idiosyncrasies.” The former are cultural features, perhaps minor in themselves and arising from ultimately trivial reasons, that predispose a society toward other choices which are more fundamental and significant. An example of this is the QWERTY layout for typewriter keys, later utilized in computer keyboards. The latter is another way to describe the impact of influential individuals upon history. What if Adolf Hitler had died in an automobile accident in 1930? How would the history of the world have changed if any of a number of great people had not lived? Diamond believes that individual leaders and cultural idiosyncrasies influence the details of the historical process. However, because some environments are more favorable and supportive than others for human inventiveness, human history, in its broadest and most sweeping aspects, is determined.
To demonstrate that his reliance upon geography and environment as the ultimate explanation still allows for the human element, he looks at the question of why European societies have dominated the modern world rather than those of East Asia or the Fertile Crescent. Western Europe was among the last areas in Eurasia to domesticate food. Even as late as the fifteenth century, Islamic and Chinese societies were technologically superior. By the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, however, European societies were ascending. What happened?
In both cases, human action made the difference, but it was human action dependent upon the environment. In the case of the Fertile Crescent, the answer was environmental destruction over an extended period of time. The region is ecologically fragile, with less rainfall than Northern and Western Europe. Too many people, too many farms, and too many sheep eventually overwhelmed the vegetation. In the case of China, geography made political unification relatively easy compared to Europe. Instead of many states, each in competition with its neighbors, there was only one state. In Europe, there was always one state willing to embrace an innovation in hope of gaining an advantage in the competition. Once such an innovation was proven advantageous, it rapidly spread through other parts of Europe. In contrast, once an innovation was rejected in China, it disappeared. Diamond points to specific decisions, such as the end of the Chinese treasure fleets in the fifteenth century, which resulted in the loss of Chinese superiority. Geography reinforced the tendency toward centralization of authority in China. However, it was a specific human decision, resulting from local political conflict, which resulted in the termination of the treasure fleets. If they had been continued, then it may well have been the Asian rather than the European part of Eurasia which dominated the other continents.
How convincing is Diamond? As in any grand synthesis, it is difficult for a reader to evaluate evidence drawn from a variety of fields, many of which are unfamiliar. (The list of further readings is twenty-eight pages long.) He makes a persuasive case for the role of environment in the general evolution of human societies. His examples of adaptations of less advanced societies to food production, once exposed to it, demonstrate that the apparent backwardness was not genetic in origin. Many readers may find that the chief pleasure they have in the reading and studying of history is in the details, the idiosyncratic aspects of culture and humans. Such readers will likely find themselves unhappy with the prospect of history as a science—complex, but ultimately deterministic.
Setting
The journey of primitive humans began somewhere in Africa around 7 million BCE. Bands of what are called Homo erectus migrated throughout what is now southern Eurasia during 1 million BCE. Another group, Homo neanderthalis, migrated to what is now modern Europe somewhere around 500,000 BCE. Then, according to Diamond, the Great Leap Forward occurred approximately 50,000 years ago. The Great Leap Forward was signaled by the development of tools. Archeologists have found and dated primitive tools attributed to this time period, the age of the Cro-Magnons, the ancestors of modern humans. In their garbage heaps were found items such as needles and fishhooks, spears, and bows and arrows—signs that Cro-Magnons were improving their technology and as a result improving their diet because the new weapons allowed them to bring down larger animals. During this time period, our ancestors migrated across the sea and landed in places such as Australia and New Zealand. Only 18,000 years ago, there were people in northern Eurasia, near present-day Siberia. And some scientists believe that in 12,000 BCE, people referred to as the Clovis entered what is now North America, then spread south into South America, reaching what is now southern Chile. The latter part of that journey, the last 13,000 years, provides the timeline and the setting for the bulk of Diamond’s book.
One of the first places that Diamond stops to reflect on how societies formed is New Zealand. The country is home to two somewhat-related groups of people who live in very dissimilar settings. While the Maori settled in New Zealand, the Moriori colonized the nearby Chatham Islands. The hospitable environment in New Zealand allowed for the cultivation of crops. The soil was better; there was plenty of rain and fresh water; and the weather provided a profitable growing season. The Moriori on the Chatham Islands did not fare as well. They could not get the plants they were used to growing to produce a crop in the harsher environment and had to resort to hunting and gathering, a time-consuming task that did not provide a surplus of food. In the Moriori tribe, everyone had to work just to keep fed. In contrast, the Maori cultivated the land and had a surplus of food, allowing some members of the tribe the luxury of not having to work. This freedom from work and surplus of food is what led, Diamond argues, to the organization of an advanced culture. The people who did not have to work in the fields had time to think and to reflect on other tribal needs. A governing body was eventually formed, as was a priesthood and other specialized positions within the tribe. This free time also allowed the Maori to improve their weapons. Eventually, when the Maori explored beyond their boundaries and came upon the Chatham Islands, they were able to easily overtake the local population. The Moriori had no way to protect themselves. They had had no time to think about anything except hunting and gathering food every day of their lives. The Maori people, in time, nearly killed the Moriori into extinction.
Diamond then continues his journey, using the example of the Maori and the Moriori to explore other societies, such as the Incas in South America. The Incas suffered a society-decimating attack from the Spanish conquistadores. The Spanish conquerors brought new technology in the form of steel weapons. Along with them came the germs that the Spanish had built immunities to. The germs and the advanced technology of the Spanish proved fatal for the Incas.
Overall, the setting of this book is anywhere in the world where Diamond uncovers relevant and interesting facts that support his thesis that agriculture and environment are the crucial factors in creating the gap between “the haves and the have nots.”
Expert Q&A
Where did agriculture first arise in Africa according to Guns, Germs, and Steel?
Agriculture first arose in North Africa, particularly Egypt, as described in Guns, Germs, and Steel. This development occurred around 6000 BC and was primarily due to the diffusion of crops from the Fertile Crescent, facilitated by the region's similar climate. Although there is evidence suggesting independent agricultural development in the Sahel, West Africa, and Ethiopia, this happened later. The early adoption of agriculture in North Africa allowed the spread of agricultural practices and population dominance across the continent.
How did the environment influence population diffusion in East Asia, according to "Guns, Germs, and Steel"?
In "Guns, Germs, and Steel," environmental factors significantly influenced population diffusion in East Asia. The region's east-west rivers and lack of geographical barriers facilitated the spread of Sino-Tibetan speakers throughout East Asia, replacing original populations. Similarly, Austronesians spread across the Pacific, dominating areas where the environment hindered agricultural development by natives, such as in Indonesia. Thus, environmental conditions played a crucial role in shaping population movements and cultural dominance in these regions.
Continents and settlement patterns in Guns, Germs, and Steel
In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond argues that the geography of continents significantly influenced settlement patterns. Eurasia's east-west axis allowed for easier spread of crops, animals, and technology, fostering advanced civilizations. In contrast, the north-south axes of Africa and the Americas presented climatic and geographic barriers that hindered such exchanges, leading to slower development and less complex societies.
Fertile Crescent's Role in Early Civilization and Eurasia's Societal Development in Guns, Germs, and Steel
In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond highlights the Fertile Crescent's significance in early civilization due to its abundance of wild grains and fertile land, which facilitated the development of agriculture around 11,000 B.C. This allowed for technological advancements, leading to stable food supplies, population growth, and the rise of complex societies. The region's early adoption of farming and "founder crops" enabled it to become a cultural and civilizational hub, influencing developments across Eurasia.
Bibliography
Anonymous. 1999. “Review of Guns, Germs, and Steel.” Earth First 19 (4): 27. This article is more summation than critical response, but it provides an easy-to-follow review of the book.
Balaut, James M. 1999. “Environmentalism and Eurocentrism.” Geographical Review 89 (3): 431–48. This is a long article, and although it praises Diamond’s book, it also offers an argument against defining Diamond’s premise as being scientific. This argument has been stated in other reviews, so it is important to understand it.
Clark, Robert P. 1999. “Review of Guns, Germs, and Steel.” Journal of World History 10 (1): 203–5. Arguments abound concerning this book, especially in the company of scientists. However, Clark found Diamond’s book well worth the read.
Ferguson, Brian. 1999. “Review of Guns, Germs, and Steel.” American Anthropologist 101 (4): 900–901. Ferguson praises Diamond’s book as an excellent resource for those interested in an introduction to anthropology.
Nobles, Gregory H. 1999. “Review of Guns, Germs, and Steel.” Environmental History 4 (3): 431–33. In this detailed review, Nobles praises Diamond’s attempts to capture thousands of years of history in a very readable and enjoyable short text.
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