Author: Jared Diamond

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Pub. in: April, 1999

ISBN: 0393317552

Pages: 480

Measurements: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches

Origin of product: USA

Order code: BA00575

Other information:  

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, National Bestseller (in North America), ranked #228 in books on Amazon.com as of November 28, 2006.

This book is a somewhat linear history of the past 13,000 years across the continents. Diamond seeks to sum up history across various societies on all the continents in a relatively short volume. The impetus for this search starts with a question from a friend of his from New Guinea named Yali. Yali's question was, "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?"

Reading the book, I think I gulped at this point. This sounds like a classic, loaded question. It sounds disturbingly close to why have we (Europe and its former colonies) succeeded where they have failed. Diamond does not descend into that territory though, but he does not evade criticism for skirting it completely. There are references to a culture's success in industrializing or condensing populations that Diamond brushes off as a mixed blessing, for instance. The advantages of a hunting/gathering culture are not really explored outside of the remarkable sustaining nature of southeast Asia.

This history can probably be described (or perhaps is most successful) as based around environmental causation (as opposed to the racial/ethnic/ social causation that the lump in my throat had been fearing). Descriptions of climate (note: that the history begins with the cessation of the last great ice age), longitudinal or latitudinal axes, elevation and landmass differences play a strong role in determining the fate of humanity. Still, it is interesting to look specifically at the items gathered in the title.

Guns. Europe's refinement of this technology was based on China's innovations with gunpowder. Today's dominant society is a product as much of what it has swallowed and thus incorporated as by what it has innovated. As an interesting counterpoint, Japan had owned more and better guns in c. 1600 CE, than any country in the world. Samurai rulers first limited then outlawed the technology. Japan wouldn't resume manufacture until mid 19th century. Obviously, there is an indisputable importance in the weaponry's influence in shaping the geopolitical world of today.

Germs. Epidemics left people from cultures based on cities with who could resist smallpox and those dense populations more easily replaced those who didn't survive. Smaller groups have a distinct disadvantage versus the interdependent and consequently more interchangable larger cities. Epidemics develop out of these civilizations as germs jump over from domesticated animals (and smaller groups may not even have animals to domesticate). Interesting note: the emperors of the Mayan and Incan civilizations both succumb to disease (likely smallpox) rather than guns.

Steel. Technological advancement is keyed on innovations brought about by dense populations and the possibility for abstraction of responsibilities. A hunter-gatherer culture lacks the abstraction necessary to divide responsibilities to allow for such developments as literacy and mining, as the energies that would fuel these are directed toward survival areas. Diamond makes an interesting and controversial point that the hunter-gatherer culture may be more attuned to intelligence as an evolutionary necessity over civilized society, where the evolutionary energy may be directed at surviving these epidemic illnesses.

There are many aspects of environment that serve as limiting conditions for the development of these things. First, there appears to need to be sustainable farming. Many of the staples of modernity are the crops first domesticated in the fertile crescent region (where today we invade, suck oil, and force the conquered to endure freedom). The western Asian breadbasket provided the means to bank food so that trades could develop. As a complete side note, the Genesis book of the bible can be viewed upon through this filter as it goes into great detail how Joseph set up a system of storing and meting grain in Egypt to greatly increase the population and avoid the calamity of drought and famine brought on by sustenance farming.

Another factor in the civilizing of Eurasia is the landmass itself. Compared to Africa and the Americas, Eurasia is mainly west-east axis versus north-south. Movement of successes in cultivation and domestication could more easily occur because climate differences are easier on a latitudinal basis than on longitudinal. Something like corn (maize) which was domesticated in central Americas took a very long time to make it to North America because of geography. Llamas and guinea pigs (which could be useful for pack animals and food) never made it north. Conversely, all those fertile crescent crops and bigger domesticated animals like cattle, horses, pigs were able to spread from one tip of Asia to the opposite tip of Europe.

To answer Yali's question, some of the answer is luck. Africa, Australia and the Americas may not have been afforded the botanical or zoological advantages that Eurasia had. Some other is environmental determinism, where you are helps make up who you become. For going forward, Diamond cites transportation, communication and information advances as factors that likely will obliviate these historical forces in the future.

After word: Harpers Magazine tackles an issue that was brought up, but not as fully developed here, that of pre-Clovis Native American discoveries (pronouncements), knowingly confronting a loaded racial/ethnocentric question in a folio called "Might White of You: Are American Archaeologists White Supremacists?" The archaeological records supports people living in the Americas since about 9000-11000 BCE. There are scant scraps of evidence prior to that date, but plenty of theories typically more titillating than substantive. One wonders if the pre-Clovis discovery (especially all the business about "caucusoid" skulls), isn't so much about archaeology as setting up an imagined genocide to justify a documented genocide.

(From quoting B. Lapham, USA)

Target readers: General readers, particularly those interested in History, Anthropology, or Sociology.

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