Jared Diamond. Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years. (1997)

In a paragraph

Eurasian dominance can be explained by its technology and its diseases, which arose from its long-settled societies, which were due to its early and widespread adoption of food production which arose because of its domesticable plants and animals, its accessibility and scale and its East-West orientation.

Key points

• The book tries to answer the question from the New Guinean Yali: Why do the whites have so much more cargo? And to answer why did Pizarro defeat Atahuallpa at Cajamarca? To consider proximate and ultimate causes.

• History followed different courses for different people because of differences among people’s environments, not because of biological differences between peoples.

• Food production depended on whether wild plants and animals were available for domestication. Availability was greatest in Eurasia.  Transmission was aided by orientation of continent, lack of barriers from tropics or desserts, and scale.  Extinctions reduced possibilities.

• Food production started in Fertile Crescent 13,000 years ago, at end of Pleistocene glacial period, at start of Neolithic after Palaeolithic. Also started in China, Mexico, Andes, Eastern US, perhaps Ethiopia.  South West Asian package transmitted elsewhere. Hunter gatherers replaced violently or by weight of numbers.

• Farming leads to higher population densities, possessions, storage, political structures, writing, specialists, accumulation of knowledge, weapons, germs.

• Homo origins 7m years ago, to Asia 1m years ago, to Europe 500,000 years ago, Homo Sapiens 200,000 years ago, Cognitive Revolution 70,000 years ago, to Australia 40,000 years ago, to Alaska 12,000 BC, to South America 10,000 BC, to Greenland 2,000 BC, to Madagascar 500 AD, to NZ 1,000 AD.

• Bands, Tribes, Chiefdoms and States.

• Greater Australia – Australia and New Guinea.

• Prestige of North China based on agriculture, swept through East Asia. China culturally unified from 221 BC. First pottery in Japan.  Japan farming probably from Korea.

• Austronesian expansion. From Taiwan to Indonesia, Philippines, Pacific and Madagascar. Cultural package including pottery. From 3,500 BC. Double outrigger sailing canoe. Archaeological and linguistic evidence.

• North Africa linked to Eurasia. In sub-saharan Africa, Bantu cultural package including Sorgum, millet and foreign plants and animals.  Bantu from Nigeria 3000 BC expansion to dominate Khoisan and Pygmies.

• Suggests that Europe led Fertile Crescent because of environmental degradation. Europe led China due to bad approaches of Chinese centralised government.  Exploring fleets stopped for political reasons.  Fragmented Europe gave Columbus opportunity. Chinese unity caused by geography.  There has never been one despot who could turn the tap of progress off for all of Europe.

• History is not just one damn fact after another. Knowledge to be obtained by methods appropriate to field. Natural experiments. To teach us what shaped the modern world and what might shape our future.

Comments

A readable, learned and compelling account of how differences between Eurasia and the rest of the world arose from food production and ultimately domesticable species and geography.   It brings in a fascinating array of material, including discussions of geography, plants, animals, diseases, linguistics and the purpose of history.

A broad book, but focuses on comparative development over the last 13,000 years, so is somewhat more narrowly focused than the complimentary Sapiens and Secret of Our Success.

This book had much appeal to me.  It filled in my geographical and historical knowledge and set out a believable explanation for the main trends.

The book explains the big gap between Europe and hunter gatherers.  It does not explain the relatively slow development of India and the Middle East which may be due more to cultural factors.  I also wonder if the Anglo Saxons’ replacement of the Ancient Britains can be explained by a superior cultural package?