guns germs and steel analysis essay

Guns, Germs, and Steel

By jared diamond, guns, germs, and steel summary and analysis of part 2: the rise and spread of food production.

In Part 2, Diamond picks up with the question that ended Part 1: What gave the Spanish such an advantage over the Incas? The Spanish technology that allowed Pizarro to defeat Atahuallpa would have been impossible without agricultural advancements that began almost 1,000 years before that event. Agriculture and controlled farming were more efficient than hunting and gathering, so there was time for specialization to develop. Farming allowed social stratification to develop, with many peasants working for a small group that owned land. These owners were then freed up to develop new technologies and skills because they no longer had to spend all their days hunting for food. Populations grew as more people could be fed. While societies developed agriculture, they also began to domesticate certain large mammals. Thus, these societies had the technology, energy, and time to go to war against other nations. They also were the first to catch infectious diseases like smallpox, measles, and flu from these animals, which allowed them to evolve resistance to these diseases. In short, agriculture and domestication led to dense populations and societies that were settled, politically centralized, technologically innovative, and economically complex. Food production was a prerequisite for the conquest of other societies.

Ironically however, the areas of the world that had the best climate for agriculture were not the ones to invent agriculture. Mesopotamia was among the first places where agriculture could be found, even though it was a dry environment. In America and Australia, agriculture appeared most likely when foreign invaders came and was probably introduced through a single plant that was farmed. In this way, agriculture spread from its origins in Mesopotamia, through to most other parts of the world. It is more difficult to explain why food production failed to appear until modern times in some areas that should have been very suitable for it, such as the West Coast of America. On the other hand, it did appear in some areas that seem marginal and unfertile at first glance. Only a few areas of the world were able to develop food production independently, and did so at very different points in time. Those who had a head start on food production also had a head start on developing guns, germs, and steel. This distinction between areas that developed early food production and areas where people remained hunter-gatherers separated the “have and have-nots.”

All societies began as hunter-gatherer, so the eventual discrepancies between human societies did not exist from the beginning. Actually, being a hunter-gatherer was not even necessarily less advantageous than being a peasant farmer; some farmers spend more hours per day on food production than hunter-gatherers do. Thus, in certain areas, people were exposed to farming but decided not to adopt it. Furthermore, some people became sedentary without adopting food production—sedantariness and food production were not necessarily linked. It is also important to note that food production was not “discovered,” nor “invented.” Instead, it evolved as a by-product of decisions that were made without full knowledge of what their consequences would be. In studying the rise of food production, then, Diamond considers why it evolved in some places at certain times, rather than in others. In fact, people began by both collecting and cultivating wild foods. They only began to increase cultivation and decrease collection when the crops they had available proved to be especially good for cultivation. The availability of such crops varied by region. Five major factors contributed to the relative advantage of cultivation in certain areas: declining availability of wild foods, increased availability of domesticable wild plants, the development of technologies that made food production easier, rising population density, and the increased military strength of food producers as compared to hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherers were able to resist the pressure to become food producers only in areas that were isolated and made the immigration of food producers or techniques very difficult. In most other areas, food production reigned as the superior strategy.

Why did certain wild plants make for especially good crops, while others didn’t? Part of the explanation lies in the obvious features of certain plants. For example, some plants have obviously superior features by which hunter-gatherers would choose them over other options: large size, tastiness, seedless fruits, and long fibers. Hunter-gatherers tended to harvest wild plants that had these desirable qualities, and thus unconsciously dispersed these favorable plants more than others. These plants slowly became more common, until they became domestic crops. These more useful plants were also affected by non-human factors: seeds being dispersed more easily, some seeds being saved for later so that a drought would not kill all plants at once, and self-reproduction that allowed beneficial mutations to spread more easily. Overall, both human and natural selection helped certain plants to survive and spread more than others. (Natural selection refers to the process of species evolving through random mutations that allow them to survive and reproduce successfully.) These better-adapted plants were the ones that would later become crops. Some of these plants included barley, peas, and cereals that grew in the Fertile Crescent, an area in the mideast. The production of cereal, in particular, gave the Fertile Crescent a huge advantage because such crops grew fast, were high in carbohydrates, and yielded a lot of edible food per area cultivated; thus, they gave people in the Fertile Crescent a huge advantage by providing them with more plentiful and efficient food options. Areas that grew things like acorns had a disadvantage. Acorns, for example, are a very inefficient food source: oak trees take an extremely long time to grow, their seeds are spread by squirrels in a way that makes them impossible for humans to select and control, and they are much more bitter than other nuts like almonds. Thus, local environments had a huge impact on the rate of the development of food production. Areas that happened to have wild crops with a number of advantages that made them easier and more efficient to domesticate were the first to develop food production.

So why did agriculture not develop independently in areas that seemed fertile and suitable for these kinds of crops, like Europe and Australia? The explanation could lie either with local people being incompetent, or locally available wild plants having some kind of problem. Diamond shows that it is, in fact, the latter. There are very few major crops in the world. It has been thousands of years since humans have domesticated any new major crops. It is thus unsurprising that many areas of the world would happen to lack a naturally occurring major crop, and that local peoples would not be able to domesticate the less favorable ones they did have available. But it is harder to explain why certain plants were domesticated in one area and not in another. The answer to this involves the general environmental context of these areas where such plants failed to be domesticated. It is important to remember that plant domestication always had to compete with the hunter-gatherer lifestyle for convenience; if domestication was not significantly more efficient, then people would not adopt it. In areas that didn’t domesticate major crops, there were not enough other domesticable wild plants to justify the effort needed to domesticate the ones that were domesticated in other areas. For example, nomadic hunter-gatherers would not give up their traditional lifestyle and tend to apple orchards unless there were other plant and animal options that would make this sedentary existence competitive with the hunter-gathering existence. For agriculture to develop, an area had to have a number of easily domesticated major crops and animals. The entire suite of wild plants and animal species available to a given people is important to keep in mind when assessing why that population succeeded or failed to domesticate a particular plant.

The Fertile Crescent is a major and unusual example of this kind of area. It had five important advantages over other zones. First, it had the world’s largest zone of "Mediterranean" or temperate climate, which meant that it had a high diversity of wild plant and animal species and thus many different options for domestication. Second, it had the greatest climatic variation seasonally, which favored the evolution of many annual plants and contributed to the diversity of the region. Third, it had a wide range of altitudes in a short distance, which allowed people to stagger harvest seasons: after harvesting the first batch of crops in a low area, they could move higher to harvest seeds as they continued to mature. Fourth, it had many big wild mammals that could be domesticated. Mammals such as sheep, goats, and cows could help with the farming of plants as well. Fifth, it had less competition from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle because there were not many options for fishing or hunting animals for meat. All of these advantages lay with the natural environment of the Fertile Crescent, and not with the biology or culture of its people. People in the Fertile Crescent domesticated local plants much earlier thanks to the many environmental advantages available to them. Because of this, they domesticated more productive and valuable species, developed a denser human population more rapidly, and thus entered the modern world with more advanced technology, complex political organization, and epidemic diseases that would infect other populations.

Another important concept to keep in mind is that success actually requires avoiding many separate possible causes of failure. If even one necessary factor for success in domestication is missing, then domestication will fail overall. Potentially domesticable wild animals were also an important feature of a given environment, for example. Domestication of animals means transforming them into something more useful to humans. But very few species are actually suitable for domestication, while most efforts to domesticate animals have resulted in failure. There are six factors that contribute to successful domestication of a species: if it doesn’t have a picky diet, if it grows quickly, if it breeds well in captivity, if it has a naturally pleasant disposition, if it does not have a tendency to panic when trapped, and if it has a hierarchical social structure that allows it to adapt to humans as new “pack leaders.” This explains why horses are domesticable while zebras are not; while horses travel in herds and have a calmer disposition, zebras tend to be rebellious even when in captivity. Domestication of animals is actually very difficult, since the animal in question must meet all of these many conditions. Eurasian peoples happened to inhabit an area that naturally had more wild animals that were favorable to domestication. This was because Eurasia had a large area and ecological diversity that gave it many species, did not lose as many species in extinctions, and had more surviving candidates suitable for domestication than other continents did.

One of the most obvious and important environmental differences across continents is axis orientation. While the Americas span a larger distance from north-south than east-west, Eurasia’s major axis is east-west. This means that, in Eurasia, the climate is relatively similar across all areas of the continent. Localities at the same latitude have the same day length, seasonal variation, diseases, temperatures, and habitats. In the Americas, on the other hand, climate varies drastically from the north to the south. It was thus much easier for crops and livestock to spread on continents where the climate was similar all across the landmass. This was because the food and livestock first domesticated in the Fertile Crescent were already well adapted to the climate in other parts of Eurasia, and could quickly spread across the continent. Because food production contributed to denser populations and more potential for complex societies and technologies, this had an effect on the development of writing, technology, and empire as well. Eurasia’s early advantage is what helped it to more rapidly develop literacy, metallurgy, technology, and empire.

The first chapter of this section begins with another personal anecdote. Diamond recalls his time working for a farmer in the US, who also employed a Native American man named Levi . He remembers Levi cursing Europeans’ arrival in America, which subjected his people to great hardship. Diamond was personally struck by this outburst, which brought his attention to the ways in which native peoples continued to suffer from America’s long history of colonization. He continues to make use of personal anecdotes throughout the section in order to add color to the text. Diamond’s use of these examples helps to give his book the arc of a story; he is the narrator, who comes upon various scenarios that challenge him to take a closer look at his surroundings and consider how certain situations came to be in the first place. In this way, Diamond’s text guides the reader through his own personal journey, even as it provides a wealth of analytical, historical, and scientific evidence, as well. These more literary elements of the text—a plot, narrative voice, and moments of reflection—culminate in the metaphor with which Diamond ends the section: “Around those axes turned the fortunes of history.” This use of figurative language goes hand-in-hand with his continuous employment of literary flourishes throughout the text.

He also relates to his readers with anecdotes that don’t just chart his own journey, but also help a wide variety of potential relates engage with his subject. As he begins his chapter on the domestication of wild plants, he switches into the second person to introduce the topic: “If you’re a hiker whose appetite is jaded by farm-grown foods, it’s fun to try eating wild foods.” This statement helps him to relate the topic directly to readers who may have some experience with hiking. He goes out of his way to make his material easier to grasp by framing it in terms that most readers can understand based on their personal experience. Later, he also does this by expanding the range of texts he references as evidence. For example, he quotes from Leo Tolstoy’s novel, Anna Karenina , to make the point that many different factors are needed to bring any situation into perfect harmony. This helps him to make his point about the difficulty of domesticating animals. It also indicates that he is trying to appeal to readers who may have more familiarity with literary texts than they do with scientific or historical ones. Despite the level of scientific detail and analysis Diamond makes use of, he intends his text to appeal to readers without experience in these subjects, as well.

Diamond is careful to specify what kind of evidence he will need to make use of in order to answer the questions he raises. In this way, he continues to guide the reader and remains transparent about his methodology. For example, after raising the principle questions of this section, he notes, “Before we can hope to answer these questions, we need to figure out how to identify areas where food production originated, when it arose there, and where and when a given crop or animal was first domesticated.” This kind of statement gives readers a roadmap for the text to come; they know to expect that Diamond will explain the origins of food production, and the timeline of production. Moreover, he specifies the kinds of challenges that different types of evidence present. For example, the use of “radiocarbon is plagued by numerous technical problems,” which means that he will make use of other types of evidence as well in order to avoid leaning heavily on this one. Since this text makes use of such a wide range of evidence, it is important that Diamond is careful to chart and analyze his different methodologies.

At the end of chapter 7, Diamond makes a notable allusion to Darwin’s Origin of Species . He has just finished his description of how plant domestication first came about. Throughout this explanation, Diamond uses more scientific details than he has thus far in the text. He explains how plants typically reproduce, how this reproduction can be influenced by humans, and how natural selection means that certain plant features are preserved for further generations while others fade out of the gene pool. His allusion to Darwin’s text helps to orient readers. While many readers may not have a strong scientific background and may be thrown off by his explanations, most people have at least heard of Charles Darwin and the principle of natural selection. By referring to Darwin, Diamond gives his readers a better framework for understanding plant domestication; the "artificial selection" of agriculture is also influenced by natural selection. This allusion does not serve to make the text more relatable, but does help to support its points by connecting them to one of history’s most well-known scientists.

While the first four chapters of this section lay out basic background information, the next three chapters turn to more directly analyzing available evidence. Diamond is careful to cover necessary information on how plant domestication works, how animal domestication works, and how these two concepts were related. It is only after he has caught his readers up to speed on this basic science that he relates these concepts to the questions he raised at the beginning of the section. Namely, he uses this information about how domestication works to show how only certain areas of the world were able to develop domestication as quickly and efficiently as they did. Throughout this section, Diamond is able both to explain a number of scientific concepts and to demonstrate how these scientific concepts answer the core questions of his text.

Guns, Germs, and Steel Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Guns, Germs, and Steel is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

In the authors opinion

"Founder crops ' is a term used by Diamond to identify the plants that other cultures adopted to become food producers, which ''enabled local people to become sedentary, and thereby increased the likelihood of local crops' evolving from wild plants...

Why do New Guineans live a good life?

I think this boils down to lack of greed and being grateful for simplicity.Diamond points out, It’s their ingenuity and their quickness to learn that have always impressed me. They can go empty-handed into some of the most difficult environments...

How does Diamond reformulate it (Yali’s question) as the main theme of the book?

Diamond concludes that from the end of the Ice Age, geography ensured that different societies around the world would develop at different speeds. If Yali's people had had all the geographic advantages of Europeans, perhaps they could have...

Study Guide for Guns, Germs, and Steel

Guns, Germs, and Steel study guide contains a biography of Jared Diamond, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis of Huck Finn.

• About Guns, Germs, and Steel
• Guns, Germs, and Steel Summary
• Character List

Lesson Plan for Guns, Germs, and Steel

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Guns, Germs, and Steel
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Guns, Germs, and Steel Bibliography

Wikipedia Entries for Guns, Germs, and Steel

• Introduction

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

The book in three sentences.

Some environments provide more starting materials and more favorable conditions for utilizing inventions and building societies than other environments. This is particularly notable in the rise of European peoples, which occurred because of environmental differences and not because of biological differences in the people themselves. There are four primary reasons Europeans rose to power and conquered the natives of North and South America, and not the other way around: 1) the continental differences in the plants and animals available for domestication, which led to more food and larger populations in Europe and Asia, 2) the rate of diffusion of agriculture, technology and innovation due to the geographic orientation of Europe and Asia (east-west) compared to the Americas (north-south), 3) the ease of intercontinental diffusion between Europe, Asia, and Africa, and 4) the differences in continental size, which led to differences in total population size and technology diffusion.

Guns, Germs, and Steel summary

This is my book summary of Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. My notes are informal and often contain quotes from the book as well as my own thoughts. This summary also includes key lessons and important passages from the book.

• History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences in their environments not because of biological differences in the people themselves.
• This book seeks to answer the question, “Why did the rate of progress differ so much for cultures on different continents?”
• Around 11,000 years ago all human societies were hunter gatherers.
• Understanding the causes of history improves our ability to intervene and improve the world. Many people mistakenly assume that discussing history is just a way to explain away tough issues. Not at all. It improves our ability to take effective action.
• The most common explanation of the different trajectories experienced by Europe compared to Africa, Asia, Oceania, etc. is genetic and biological. People assume there is some innate biological difference that made Europeans smarter, more creative, or more resilient. Science, however, has produced no substantial evidence to indicate this is the primary cause of different outcomes.
• Interesting side note: scientists are always competing to discover the “earliest human remains” or the earliest XYZ. As a result, every few years there is a new “earliest” discovery. Only one can actually be the earliest, of course.
• The occupation of Australia was an incredible feat. It was the first use of water craft and range extension by humans.
• Humans were likely responsible for the extinction of nearly all of Australia’s large mammals. The same is true for many large mammals that occupied the Americas over 10,000 years ago.
• The environment of ancient Polynesian society heavily dictated the lifestyle and behaviors. The many islands have widely varying landscapes and climates. Whether or not cultures developed weapons and became skilled at warfare, whether they became hunter gatherers or farmers, whether they acted more tribal or more hierarchical was largely determined by the environment in which these people lived.
• Food and animal domestication arose independently in five different areas of the world (at widely differing times) and possibly four others although there is still some contention about those.
• We often think there is a clear division between farmer and hunter gatherer lifestyles, but actually there can be a blending of the two. For example, some cultures plant crops, resume a hunter gatherer lifestyle while they grow, then return to harvest and eat.
• Agriculture did not lead to an unequivocally better lifestyle. In fact, for those who actually grow food life tends to be worse than it would be as a hunter gatherer. If this is true, and the evidence seems to point that way, then it means that advancement of civilization has essentially happened on the backs of society’s have-nots. In other words, the entire system we live within – agriculture, capitalism, etc. – requires inequality to function.
• Agriculture allowed food production per unit area to increase, which meant a given area could support a larger population. This allowed farming cultures to defeat hunter gatherer cultures by sheer force due to larger populations. This, in turn, led to the spread of more agricultural societies across the globe.
• Throughout the industrial revolution in Great Britain, moths of darker colors became more likely to survive because the surrounding environment become dirtier and covered in soot, smoke, and debris. Thus, it was more likely that dark-colored moths would survive than light-colored moths. As the environment changed, so did the evolution of moths. A fascinating example of evolution on a small scale.
• Cereal crops alone account for more than half of the food consumed by modern humans.
• The rise of indigenous food production in certain areas was the result of a few factors. First, certain areas had plants better suited to domestication. This led people to domestic earlier in those regions. Second, because of this early start, these people eventually domesticated more difficult plants. Evidence seems to indicate that all people’s are capable of food production and even modern hunter gatherers seem to be naturally moving that way.
• The rise of agriculture in some areas before others has to do with the environment, not the intelligence of the people.
• The Anna Karenina Principle: In many areas of life, success is not about doing one thing correctly, but about avoiding many possible modes of failure.
• Domesticated animals differ in multiple ways from their wild ancestors. For example, many domesticated animals are different sizes and have smaller brains than their wild ancestors.
• Domestication of large mammals ended approximately 4500 years ago. This indicates humans attempted to domesticate all of them and no suitable species remained. This is another piece of evidence that the type of animals available dictated the domestication in certain regions, not the people living in the region. This the spread of agriculture was once again impacted by the environment.
• There is a inefficiency during the eating process. The nutrient transfer is much less than 100 percent and typically around 10 percent. For example, it takes 10,000 pounds of corn to create a 1,000 pound bull.
• The primary geographic axis of North and South America is north-south. That is, the land mass is more longitudinal than latitudinal. The same for Africa. But for Europe and Asia, the primary axis is east-west. Interestingly, this positioning and shape matters greatly because it appears that agriculture and innovations spread more rapidly along east-west axes than along north-south axes.
• Locations along the same east-west axis share similar latitudes and thus have similar day lengths, seasons, climate, rainfalls, and biomes. All of which increase the speed of innovation relative to north-south axes.
• All tropical rainforests are within 10 degrees of latitude of the equator.
• One collection of evidence for the difference in spread along geographic axes is the spread of domesticated crops. Many crops spread across Asia with one domestication, while crops like cotton or squash were domesticated in multiple individual areas throughout Mesoamerica. This is because the crop spread too slowly for one domestication to takeover the region.
• It is vital to realize that although Diamond is discussing long time frames of hundreds or thousands of years, the core idea can be applied to short time spans of individual behavior as well. Indeed, large long term differences only occur because short term differences are repeated over and over again. Small environmental differences led to small changes in individual behavior, which resulted in significant differences when repeated for thousands of years.
• One reason farming communities developed immunity to diseases that wiped out hunter gatherer populations is that some diseases (like measles) are “crowd diseases.” They require a large population to sustain themselves because they act quickly: you either die or develop immunity. In order for the disease to sustain itself there must be enough new babies born to contract the disease from those who have already developed immunity. Only agricultural communities could grow to the required population size.
• On average, farming sustains populations that are 10x to 100x larger than hunting and gathering.
• North America was populated by about 20 million Native Americans when Columbus landed in 1492. Within two centuries, 95 percent of the native population had died, most of them from infectious diseases.
• Writing systems are historically seen as the deciding factor on whether an ancients civilization is considered advanced or not. This can be debated. The Incas built a great civilization without writing.
• All alphabets in the modern world evolved from one original alphabet, either in idea or actual written form, developed in the Middle East.
• Writing evolved independently in a few areas, but was spread via idea diffusion in most cultures and locations.
• Most inventions are not a result of necessity, but rather the result of tinkers and curiosity.
• Technology develops cumulatively rather than in isolated heroic acts. Even people we often associate with acts of genius like the Wright Brothers and Thomas Edison actually built upon the work of predecessors and had capable people who followed them and advanced ideas.
• Technology finds most of its uses after it has been invented rather than being invented to solve a foreseen need. The phrase, “necessity is the mother of invention” is generally incorrect. (Even though some examples, like the Manhattan Project, exist.)
• Long life expectancy is one reason technology might develop and spread faster in some locations rather than others. A longer life increases the surface area you have to test ideas and allows you to take on longer projects that you might otherwise avoid with limited time.
• Geographic location is a key determinant in the pace of technological innovation and acceleration because a centrally located society will not only accumulate knowledge and technology from their own inventions, but also from neighboring societies. In the case of a particularly large land mass like Eurasia, technologies can spread from one culture to another and continue to do so along the entire span of the continent. This spread occurs much more quickly in these locations than it would to, say, aboriginal cultures in Tasmania, which did not receive outside contact from other civilizations for over 10,000 years.
• Government and religion are two of the main reasons some societies overcame others. These shared myths led to collaboration and increased power.
• There are four levels of organization in society: bands (5-80 people), tribes (100-1000 people),  chiefdoms (1000 to tens of thousands of people), and states (50,000 or more people).
• Humanity has been on a clear path from small groups to larger ones, culminating in states, over the last few thousand years.
• The size of a population in a region is a strong predictor of the complexity of the society.
• Culture is heavily dependent on population density. The higher the population, the more culture seems to spawn and spread.
• War, or the threat of war, is the primary factor in the amalgamation of human societies throughout history. It is how cultures merge.
• Five dog night is an Australian phrase referring to a very cold night because you would need to use five dogs as blankets.
• Isolation is a key factor preventing creativity and innovation from spreading because most people and societies get their ideas from outside societies. So constant connection to others and trading of ideas and resources is essential for technological and creative progress.
• Food production was a key component in the determining the strength of a society. People sharing similar ancestors inhabited New Guinea and Indonesia, but the Indonesians were still hunter gatherers while the New Guineans had develop agriculture. When Austronesians invaded the region, Indonesians fell under their control, but New Guineas (with their food, germ resistance, and technologies) were able to resist.
• Again and again, the environment dictated the spread of power throughout islands of East Asia and the Pacific. Depending on location, islanders differed in their connectedness to other peoples and in the plants and animals available to them to domesticate. People with favorable locations for food production and access to technology replaced those with less favorable environments.
• The end of Chapter 18 shares multiple interesting examples of peoples who were largely similar genetically because of similar ancestors, but developed very different societies and technologies due to the their individual environments.
• Example of cultural evolution: the Moari of New Zealand were able to determine the most useful rocks and animals for domestication within a century of arriving.
• The striking differences in the histories of peoples on different continents have been due not to differences among the peoples themselves, but to differences in their environments.
• There are four primary reasons Europeans rose to power and conquered the natives of North and South America, and not the other way around.
• Reason 1: Continental differences in the plants and animals available for domestication. The differences are vast. Europe and Asia had the best prospects, then Africa, then the Americas, then Australia. The improved agricultural aspects led to larger populations and larger armies in Europe and Asia.
• Reason 2: the rate of diffusion of technological innovation due to the orientation of continents (east-west vs. north-south) and geographic barriers (mountains, deserts, etc.). The favorable geography of the Europe and Asia landmass resulted in much faster agricultural and technological expansion.
• Reason 3: ease of intercontinental diffusion. It was easy for ideas, technologies, and innovations to spread between Europe, Asia, and Africa. However, it was quite difficult for things to spread to the Americas because of large oceans and the only close landmass being in cold climates and at high latitudes unsuitable for farming.
• Reason 4: continental differences in total population size. Europe and Asia had a huge landmass where there was constant and widespread competition.
• All human societies contain inventive people. It’s just that some environments provide more starting materials and more favorable conditions for utilizing inventions than other environments.
• The fragmentation of Europe was a key in enabling Columbus to cross the Atlantic. He was turned down by four different kingdoms before finally convincing the king and queen of Spain to fund his trip. Meanwhile, Chona had the technology to explore the world by ship, but their dictator at the time did not want to do so. In this way, one person prevented an entire made of people (with the technology) from succeeding. A little fragmentation is good. Too much centralized power means one person can handcuff the creativity of many.
• In the 1960s and 1970s, the decisions of a few Chinese leaders resulted in the schools closing in the country for five years. Crazy how so much centralized power is still playing a huge role.
• Europe has always been far more fragmented than China. Even at its peak, the Roman Empire never controlled more than half of Europe.
• Understanding ultimate causes is essential to understanding human behavior.
• Prediction of history is much easier over long time spans, but basically impossible over short time spans.
• Great discussion of science in the last half of the epilogue.
• Careful observations of natural experiments (things happening in the real world) can lead to fascinating and useful insights.
• Epidemiology, ecology, and evolutionary biology are developing better methods for dealing with the confounding factors often present in natural experiments.

Reading Suggestions

This is a list of authors, books, and concepts mentioned in Guns, Germs, and Steel, which might be useful for future reading.

• Toynbee’s 12-volume series on history
• Film: The Gods Must Be Crazy
• Maori New Zealand’s musket wars
• Applications of Chaos Theory. The QWERTY keyboard vs. Dvorak keyboard is one example.

Additional Thoughts

This is a list of interesting notes, side stories, or additional thoughts that were sparked as a I read the book.

• Many large mammals used for food production were not domesticated in the Americas because they became extinct around 13,000 BC (due to the appearance of humans?). This was well before agriculture arrived in America, thus domesticating these animals never occurred to prehistoric hunter gatherers. But why?

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The Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies Essay (Book Review)

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
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The attempt by writers of the nonfiction but documentary literature genres to explore various global phenomena often responds to the claim of certain absolutism, that is, the recognition of the perfect truth of the picture of the world that the author offers. In this sense, particularly intriguing are those literary works in which the authors address the entire history of human development from the very beginning of civilizational progress. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is an illustrative example of such a book, in which Jared M. Diamond seeks to answer the fundamental question of why some nations turn out to be more progressive and developed when others have distinct disadvantages of a slower rate of development. Diamond forms the claim as he tries to present the reader with knowledge that reflects all of humanity’s causal relationships and thus could answer the fundamental question of why, for example, the United States, the UAE, and Singapore have significantly outpaced Ethiopia and Afghanistan in the level of technological, political and moral development. Perhaps an excellent demonstration of the writer’s motivation in choosing the topic was the conversation with the New Guinean politician Yali described at the beginning of the book, who asks Diamond the question, “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?” (p. 14). This book review aims to examine the selected book in depth from the context of a critical analysis of the author’s thoughts aimed at attempting to answer Yali’s question.

The historical and ethnographic pretentiousness of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies should not be seen as the author’s superficial attempt to provide world truth. On the contrary, Diamond’s book proves to be carefully crafted, structured, and organized, as the writer presents nineteen chapters, each of which specifically answers the question at hand. For example, in the first chapter, Diamond discusses the very beginnings of civilization, which took place thirteen thousand years ago, and refers to the reader to ancient Africa as the birthplace of all humanity (p. 37). At the same time, in chapter fourteen, the author attempts to answer the question of the development of religion and the legal system (p. 165). Although most of Diamond’s ideas and thoughts are not supported by sources and footnotes, he cites a great deal of graphic and illustrative material, as well as references to archaeological and anthropological evidence, which encourages the reader to be convinced of the writer’s authority. In other words, Diamond’s book should not be regarded as fiction or provocative material designed only to increase sales, but instead is practically a textbook on the historical and cultural development of civilization. Nevertheless, the book cannot be called a real textbook since Diamond often refers the reader to his own experiences and examples of life situations, that is, he introduces subjectivity into the material (p. 85). It follows that the literary work should be seen as a carefully considered and organized attempt by the author to answer a fundamental existential question but to do so in as accessible a way as possible to a wide range of readers.

Diamond’s scrupulousness in attempting to answer Yali’s question is that the author does not present it immediately after formulating the task itself and, indeed, does not answer it directly. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is structured to show that combinations of certain factors may have been stimulating the development of one civilization, and accordingly, the scarcity of such resources was an excuse for slow progress for another. This is the thoroughness of the book, for Diamond immediately states that there is no single factor, biological or cultural, that can answer Yali’s question, but instead, the problem must be looked at comprehensively (p. 17).

The writer addresses the idea of complex determinism when he shows why one civilizational community differs from another. In stimulating development, Diamond attaches great importance to the availability of resources and postulates that it was the shift from gathering and hunting to agriculture that catalyzed development (p. 356). In this sense, the critical argument is that those regions that had more agricultural resources and wild animals suitable for domestication made a more rapid transition in development and are qualitatively different from those that had scarce opportunities. This seems to be reflected in the current economic order as well since the more technologically advanced countries often use the historical model of capitalism based on competition, cooperation, and resources. This parallels the conclusion that the model of capitalism was also valid for primitive intercommunal and inter-civilizational relations, even if there were not yet direct contacts between communities as well as states themselves.

In this sense, it is interesting to highlight some of the contradictions between the primitive community model described by Diamond and the modern capitalist state as exemplified by the United States, especially since Diamond himself does not neglect such comparisons. In particular, Diamond reports that resource-rich societies began to produce more food to meet the needs of more people and support populations, which, in turn, contributed to the development of better technology and political systems (p. 87). At the same time, The Sane Society by Erich Fromm argues that modern U.S. society (relative to the mid-twentieth century) has created a system in which surplus agricultural production is not economically viable, so the government decides to reduce production despite the millions of starving Americans (Fromm, 1990). This parallel is not coincidental: it seems that the path of civilizational development, based initially on the pursuit of human happiness and opportunity for all, has been broken. Diamond himself provides excellent corroboration of this assumption when he writes that his life in the New Guinean regions showed that despite the civilizational capabilities of developed countries (the United States), Americans lacked the compassion and support that the author received in less technologically advanced territories (p. 18). All of this leads to the idea that human progress in the developed world has not been built on a path toward absolute happiness, at least equal for all.

The thoroughness of Diamond’s book material becomes especially apparent when reading chapter four. Earlier, the author told the reader how powerful the catalyzing effect of agriculture was and how its spread helped the development of civilizational thought. In chapter four, the writer does not abandon this concept but expands it with a non-obvious idea, namely, the development of immunity: “The humans who domesticated animals were the first to fall victim to the newly evolved germs, but those humans then evolved substantial resistance to the new diseases” (p. 92). It is interesting that, as Diamond reports, being forced to do “dirty” work in the soil caused people to develop a large number of diseases, which, combined with Darwin’s evolutionary ideas, created communities resistant to such diseases (p. 124). The spread of disease as a factor in technological development was also suggested further when Diamond reported geographic location as a predictor of progress (p. 77; p. 314). In particular, the availability of maritime communication between countries at the stage of the commercial development of nations allowed them to exchange not only technology, resources, and knowledge but also diseases, which enhanced the worldwide progress of those countries that were involved in the trade routes. Thus, Diamond is characterized by the use of fundamental biological and ecological theories to explain the socio-economic development of countries, which strengthens the perception of the authoritativeness of book material. However, this thought allows one to be more critical of the differentiation of the world order into unambiguously developed and undeveloped countries. The traditional perception of Western society as progressive, especially in comparison with African regions, is violated in this case. The reason for this violation is the involvement of resource-rich African countries in world trade routes and, thus, the almost equal pace of agricultural development for both Western and African countries. This idea, expressed by Diamond, forces the reader to reflect on the stereotypical understanding of the global order and rethink previous views.

A critical analysis of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is worth elaborating on its strengths and weaknesses. A large number of illustrative examples, the author’s easy-to-understand writing style, the use of graphics, the fragmentation of the general answer to the Yali question into sections, and their logical sequence are positive aspects of this literary work. These attributes allow the reader to avoid wondering what exactly Diamond meant by a particular argument while still maintaining the overall connection of the narrative between the sections. Moreover, the author constantly refers to evidence to support his theses, which should also be seen as a strength of the book (p. 37; p. 23; p. 304). After reading it, one also gets the impression that Diamond is not biased in his ideas and is not a typical Western-centric author, so he appears to be more open to new experiences and ideas that he writes about in his book.

Despite its apparent advantages, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is not without some weaknesses. One such weakness is some of the overgeneralization to which Diamond turns in an attempt to make his arguments convincing. For example, in describing communities, species, and varieties, Diamond keeps using the words “many” and “most” but never specifies specific biological names, which can seem like a manipulative generalization to cover up inconvenient evidence: “many herd species…”, “But the vast majority of wild plants…” (p. 174; p. 121). A big issue with this book is the seeming neglect of cultural influences on the development of civilizations since Diamond dwells primarily on geographical and environmental factors, though he does touch on writing and languages. The inexperienced reader might infer from this that culture — art, film, and sculpture — had no practical value in shaping civilizational progress, which in reality, it does not. A fundamental problem with the book is also the lack of an answer to the question apparently arising from Diamond’s argument. Thus, one of the book’s main ideas is that a larger population creates opportunities for accelerated technological and civilizational progress. On this assumption, indeed, based on the evidence, India and China, as the leaders in the population, should be the absolute leaders in the development of civilization as well, but there is some contradiction in this: Diamond provides no answer to this contradiction. In turn, this may lead the reader to misunderstand the perspectives of non-European societies.

It is fair to say that the real flaws in this book do not mean that Diamond’s work was unsuccessful, biased, or unworthy of reading. Like all literature, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies has weaknesses, but it is the material that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 (Skube et al., 1998). The book provides immediate answers to the question of civilizational differences between communities but should not be seen as claiming to be the only answer. Diamond forces a reflection and reconsideration of some of the previously stable views of the world order, which reinforces the development of critical reflection. Thus, Diamond has done serious work and research, including factual research, to provide the reader with reflections on the geographic and ecological determinism of development. For this reason, the book would be useful reading for students and scholars interested in ethnographic and historical studies, as well as for all readers who would like to expand their knowledge of the process of the historical development of civilizations. Thus, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared M. Diamond is unequivocally recommended for reading, if only for the reason that the book allows to form a primary basis for understanding the processes of civilizational development or to evaluate the existing knowledge critically.

Diamond, J. M. (1997). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies . W. W. Norton & Company.

Fromm, E. (1990). The sane society . Holt Paperbacks.

Skube, M., Noonan, P., and Gater Jr., H. L. (1998). Guns, germs and steel: The fates of human societies, by Jared Diamond (W.W. Norton) . The Pulitzer Prizes. Web.

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An Analysis of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs & Steel

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In his 1997 work Guns, Germs and Steel , Jared Diamond marshals evidence from five continents and across 13,000 years of human history in an attempt to answer the question of why that history unfolded so differently in various parts of the globe. His results offer new explanations for why the unequal divisions of power and wealth so familiar to us today came into existence – and have persisted.

Balancing materials drawn from a vast range of sources, addressing core problems that have fascinated historians, anthropologists, biologists and geographers alike – and blending his analysis to create a compelling narrative that became an international best-seller and reached a broad general market – required a mastery of the critical thinking skill of reasoning that few other scholars can rival. Diamond’s reasoning skills allow him to persuade his readers of the value of his interdisciplinary approach and produce well-structured arguments that keep them turning pages even as he refocuses his analysis from one disparate example to another.

Diamond adds to that a spectacular ability to grasp the meaning of the available evidence produced by scholars in those widely different disciplines – making Guns, Germs and Steel equally valuable as an exercise in high-level interpretation.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter | 5  pages, ways in to the text, section 1 | 19  pages, chapter 1 | 4  pages, the author and the historical context, chapter 2 | 5  pages, academic context, chapter 3 | 5  pages, the problem, chapter 4 | 4  pages, the author’s contribution, section 2 | 19  pages, chapter 5 | 5  pages, chapter 6 | 5  pages, secondary ideas, chapter 7 | 4  pages, achievement, chapter 8 | 4  pages, place in the author’s work, section 3 | 21  pages, chapter 9 | 5  pages, the first responses, chapter 10 | 5  pages, the evolving debate, chapter 11 | 5  pages, impact and influence today, chapter 12 | 5  pages, where next.

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Guns, Germs, and Steel

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Part 4, Chapter 18-Epilogue

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Biology versus Geography

One of Diamond’s key goals in this book is to refute the claim that different peoples have fared differently throughout history for biological reasons. Darwinian theory has been particular influential in this regard, and Diamond believes that, even today, people are still liable to believe that some types of people are inherently superior or inferior. This highlights the moral rationale behind this book: Diamond argues that such notions have perpetuated racist thinking, and he is not willing to let this go unchallenged. Despite racism being deemed socially unacceptable, Diamond maintains that some people may still harbor these beliefs, even if they do not express them outright. He consequently states that these misplaced beliefs are motive enough for him to write this rebuttal .

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Guns, Germs and Steel — Analysis Of William Mcneill’s Critique Of Guns, Germs, And Steel

Analysis of William Mcneill's Critique of Guns, Germs, and Steel

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