Read the book, “Guns, Germs and Steel” and get back to me.
Or actually here’s the synopsis from Wikipedia:
Diamond argues that Eurasian
civilization is not so much a product of ingenuity, but of opportunity and necessity. That is, civilization is not created out of superior intelligence, but is the result of a chain of developments, each made possible by certain preconditions.
The first step towards civilization is the move from
nomadic hunter-gatherer to rooted agrarian society. Several conditions are necessary for this transition to occur: access to high-carbohydrate vegetation that endures storage; a
climate dry enough to allow storage; and access to animals docile enough for
domestication and versatile enough to survive captivity. Control of
crops and livestock leads to food
surpluses. Surpluses free people to specialize in activities other than sustenance and support population growth. The combination of specialization and population growth leads to the accumulation of social and technological innovations which build on each other. Large societies develop
ruling classes and supporting
bureaucracies, which in turn lead to the organization of
nation-states and empires.
[2]
Although agriculture arose in several parts of the world, Eurasia gained an early advantage due to the greater availability of suitable plant and animal species for domestication. In particular, Eurasia has
barley, two varieties of wheat, and three protein-rich
pulses for food;
flax for textiles; and goats, sheep, and cattle. Eurasian grains were richer in protein, easier to sow, and easier to store than American maize or tropical bananas.
As early Western Asian civilizations developed trading relationships, they found additional useful animals in adjacent territories, such as horses and
donkeys for use in transport. Diamond identifies 13 species of large animals over 100 pounds (45 kg) domesticated in Eurasia, compared with just one in South America (counting the
llama and
alpaca as breeds within the same species) and none at all in the rest of the world. Australia and North America suffered from a lack of useful animals due to
extinction, probably by human hunting, shortly after the end of the
Pleistocene, and the only
domesticated animals in
New Guinea came from the East Asian mainland during the
Austronesian settlement around 4,000–5,000 years ago. Biological relatives of the horse, including
zebras and
onagers, proved untameable; and although
African elephants can be tamed, it is very difficult to breed them in captivity.
[2][3] Diamond describes the small number of domesticated species (14 out of 148 "candidates") as an instance of the
Anna Karenina principle: many promising species have just one of several significant difficulties that prevent domestication. He argues that all large mammals that could be domesticated, have been.
[2]: 168–174
Eurasians domesticated goats and sheep for hides, clothing, and cheese; cows for milk;
bullocks for
tillage of fields and transport; and benign animals such as pigs and chickens. Large domestic animals such as horses and camels offered the considerable military and economic advantages of mobile transport.
Continental axes according to the book
Eurasia's large landmass and long east–west distance increased these advantages. Its large area provided more plant and animal species suitable for domestication. Equally important, its east–west orientation has allowed groups of people to wander and empires to conquer from one end of the continent to the other while staying at the same latitude. This was important because similar climate and cycle of seasons let them keep the same "food production system" – they could keep growing the same crops and raising the same animals all the way from Scotland to Siberia. Doing this throughout history, they spread innovations, languages and diseases everywhere.
By contrast, the north-south orientation of the Americas and Africa created countless difficulties adapting crops domesticated at one
latitude for use at other latitudes (and, in North America, adapting crops from one side of the
Rocky Mountains to the other). Similarly, Africa was fragmented by its extreme variations in climate from north to south: crops and animals that flourished in one area never reached other areas where they could have flourished, because they could not survive the intervening environment. Europe was the ultimate beneficiary of Eurasia's east–west orientation: in the
first millennium BCE, the
Mediterranean areas of Europe adopted Southwestern Asia's animals, plants, and agricultural techniques; in the
first millennium CE, the rest of Europe followed suit.
[2][3]
The plentiful supply of food and the dense populations that it supported made
division of labor possible. The rise of non-farming specialists such as craftsmen and
scribesaccelerated economic growth and technological progress. These economic and technological advantages eventually enabled Europeans to conquer the peoples of the other continents in recent centuries by using guns and steel, particularly after the devastation of native populations by the epidemic diseases from germs.
Eurasia's dense populations, high levels of trade, and living in close proximity to livestock resulted in widespread transmission of diseases, including from animals to humans.
Smallpox,
measles, and
influenza were the result of close proximity between dense populations of animals and humans.
Natural selection endowed most Eurasians with genetic variations making them less susceptible to some diseases, and constant circulation of diseases meant adult individuals had developed
immunity to a wide range of
pathogens. When Europeans made contact with the Americas, European diseases (to which Americans had no immunity) ravaged the indigenous American population, rather than the other way around. The "trade" in diseases was a little more balanced in Africa and southern Asia, where endemic malaria and
yellow fever made these regions notorious as the "white man's grave".
[4] Some researchers say
syphilis may have originated in the Americas,[
citation needed]some say it was known to
Hippocrates,
[5] and others think it was brought from the Americas by
Columbus and his successors.
[6] The European diseases from
germs obliterated indigenous populations so that relatively small numbers of Europeans could maintain dominance.
[2][3]
Diamond proposes geographical explanations for why western European societies, rather than other Eurasian powers such as China, have been the dominant colonizers.
[2][7] He said Europe's geography favored
balkanization into smaller, closer nation-states, bordered by natural barriers of mountains, rivers, and coastline. Advanced civilization developed first in areas whose geography lacked these barriers, such as China, India and Mesopotamia. There, the ease of conquest meant they were dominated by large empires in which manufacturing, trade and knowledge flourished for millennia, while balkanized Europe remained more primitive.
However, at a later stage of development, western Europe's fragmented governmental structure actually became an advantage. Monolithic, isolated empires without serious competition could continue mistaken policies – such as China squandering its naval mastery by
banning the building of ocean-going ships – for long periods without immediate consequences. In Western Europe, by contrast, competition from immediate neighbors meant that governments could not afford to suppress economic and technological progress for long; if they did not correct their mistakes, they were out-competed and/or conquered relatively quickly. While the leading powers alternated, a constant was rapid development of knowledge which could not be suppressed. For instance, the Chinese Emperor could ban shipbuilding and be obeyed, ending China's Age of Discovery, but the Pope could not keep
Galileo's
Dialogue from being republished in Protestant countries, or
Kepler and
Newton from continuing his progress; this ultimately enabled European merchant ships and navies to navigate around the globe. Western Europe also benefited from a more temperate climate than Southwestern Asia where intense agriculture ultimately damaged the environment, encouraged
desertification, and hurt
soil fertility.
AgricultureEdit
The five most significant domesticated animals: clockwise, cattle, pigs, goats, sheep and horses
Guns, Germs, and Steel argues that
cities require an ample supply of food, and thus are dependent on agriculture. As farmers do the work of providing food, division of labor allows others freedom to pursue other functions, such as mining and literacy.
The crucial trap for the development of agriculture is the availability of wild edible plant species suitable for domestication. Farming arose early in the
Fertile Crescent since the area had an abundance of wild wheat and pulse species that were nutritious and easy to domesticate. In contrast, American farmers had to struggle to develop corn as a useful food from its probable wild ancestor,
teosinte.
Also important to the transition from hunter-gatherer to city-dwelling agrarian societies was the presence of "large" domesticable animals, raised for meat, work, and long-distance communication. Diamond identifies a mere 14 domesticated large mammal species worldwide. The five most useful (cow, horse, sheep, goat, and pig) are all descendants of species
endemicto
Eurasia. Of the remaining nine, only two (the
llama and
alpaca both of South America) are indigenous to a land outside the temperate region of Eurasia.
Due to the
Anna Karenina principle, surprisingly few animals are suitable for domestication. Diamond identifies six criteria including the animal being sufficiently docile, gregarious, willing to breed in captivity and having a social dominance hierarchy. Therefore, none of the many African mammals such as the
zebra,
antelope,
cape buffalo, and
African elephantwere ever domesticated (although some can be tamed, they are not easily bred in captivity). The
Holocene extinction event eliminated many of the
megafauna that, had they survived, might have become candidate species, and
Diamond arguesthat the pattern of extinction is more severe on continents where animals that had no prior experience of humans were exposed to humans who already possessed advanced hunting techniques (such as the Americas and Australia).
Smaller domesticable animals such as dogs, cats, chickens, and
guinea pigs may be valuable in various ways to an agricultural society, but will not be adequate in themselves to sustain a large-scale agrarian society. An important example is the use of larger animals such as cattle and horses in plowing land, allowing for much greater crop productivity and the ability to farm a much wider variety of land and soil types than would be possible solely by human muscle power. Large domestic animals also have an important role in the transportation of goods and people over long distances, giving the societies that possess them considerable military and economic advantages.
GeographyEdit
Diamond argues that geography shaped
human migration, not simply by making travel difficult (particularly by latitude), but by how climates affect where domesticable animals can easily travel and where crops can ideally grow easily due to the sun. The dominant
Out of Africa theory holds that modern humans developed east of the
Great Rift Valley of the African continent at one time or another. The
Saharakept people from migrating north to the
Fertile Crescent, until later when the
Nile River valley became accommodating. Diamond continues to describe the story of human development up to the modern era, through the rapid development of technology, and its dire consequences on hunter-gathering cultures around the world.
Diamond touches on why the dominant powers of the last 500 years have been West European rather than East Asian, especially Chinese. The Asian areas in which big civilizations arose had geographical features conducive to the formation of large, stable, isolated empires which faced no external pressure to change which led to stagnation. Europe's many
natural barriersallowed the development of competing nation states. Such competition forced the European nations to encourage innovation and avoid technological stagnation.
In the later context of the
European colonization of the Americas, 95% of the indigenous populations are believed to have been
killed off by diseases brought by the Europeans. Many were killed by infectious diseases such as smallpox and measles. Similar circumstances were observed in
Australia and
South Africa. Aboriginal Australians and the Khoikhoi population were devastated by smallpox, measles, influenza, and other diseases.
[8][9]
Diamond questions how diseases native to the American continents did not kill off Europeans, and posits that most of these diseases were developed and sustained only in large dense populations in villages and cities. He also states most epidemic diseases evolve from similar diseases of domestic animals. The combined effect of the increased population densities supported by agriculture, and of close human proximity to domesticated animals leading to animal diseases infecting humans, resulted in European societies acquiring a much richer collection of dangerous pathogens to which European people had acquired immunity through
natural selection (such as the
Black Death and other epidemics) during a longer time than was the case for
Native American hunter-gatherersand farmers.
He mentions the tropical diseases (mainly
malaria) that limited European penetration into Africa as an exception. Endemic infectious diseases were also barriers to European colonisation of Southeast Asia and New Guinea.
